lsabe 

l$ood  brid 


DAYS  OUT  AND  OTHER  PAPERS. 
MORE  JONATHAN    PAPERS. 
THE  JONATHAN   PAPERS. 

HOUGHTON   MTFFLIN  COMPANY 
BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 


Days  Out  and  Other  Papers 


Days  Out 

and  Other  Papers 

By 

NW.  Elisabeth  Woodbridge 


BOSTON  AND   NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

J&re&l  CambriDoe 
1917 


COPYRIGHT,    1917,   BY  ELISABETH   WOODBRIDGE   MORRIS 
ALL   RIGHTS   RESERVED 

Published  November  79/7 


Contents 


DAYS  OUT 3 

AN  UNLOVELY  VIRTUE 12 

A  BRIEF  FOR  THE  HAT 19 

THE  CAT  AND  THE  BELL-COLLAR       ....  24 

CLUBS  AMONG  THE  CUBS 31 

THE  CULT  OF  THE  SECOND-BEST       ....  37 

AN  APPENDIX  TO  BACON 49 

THE  EMBARRASSMENT  OF  FINALITY   ....  53 

THE  WINE  OF  ANONYMITY 61 

THE  HOUSE  AND  THE  HILL 69 

HUMOR  AND  THE  HEROINE 77 

THE  HUMOR-FETISH 85 

IN  THE  MATTER  OF  "FAITH" 93 

*'!N  THEIR  SEASON" 103 

MANNERS  AND  THE  PURITAN Ill 

A  MATTER  OF  PLANES 123 

A  MEDITATION  CONCERNING  FORMS  .      .     .     .129 

THE  TYRANNY  OF  THINGS 135 

THE  TYRANNY  OF  FACTS 141 

TRAVELERS'  LETTERS 148 

THE  NOVELIST'S  CHOICE 155 

THE  LITERARY  USES  OF  EXPERIENCE  191 


372196 


Days  Out  and  Other  Papers 


Days  Out 

I  HAD  followed  up  her  advertisement,  and 
she  stood  before  me  in  the  dim  hallway  to 
which  she  had  given  me  entrance.  As  she 
fingered  the  front  door  knob  she  told  me  her 
qualities.  "Yes,  mum,"  she  concluded,  "I 
does  my  work,  mum.  I  don't  never  have 
company,  and  I  don't  never  want  days  out." 

I  protested,  "I  always  give  my  cook  one 
day  a  week,  afternoon  and  evening." 

"Yes,  mum,  I  know.  But  when  I  gets  my 
work  done,  I  likes  to  set  right  down  in  the 
kitchen.  I  don't  want  to  go  nowhere.  If 
there's  somethin'  I  need,  —  a  spool  o'  cotton, 
or  some  stockin's,  —  why,  I  most  gen'ally 
tells  the  lady,  two-three  days  ahead,  and 
then  I  runs  out  of  a  Saturday  evenin',  mebbe, 
fer  an  hour  or  two." 

"And  Sundays?"  I  asked  faintly,  — "I 
let  my  cook  and  waitress  both  go  out  on 
Sunday  afternoon." 

"No,  I  don't  never  go  out  on  Sundays  at 
all.  Ye  see,  I  likes  to  do  my  work,  and  when 


4  DAYS  OUT 

I  gets  through  I  likes  to  rest.  That's  the 
kind  I  am." 

I  sighed.  Undoubtedly  hers  was  a  good 
kind,  but  undoubtedly  I  did  n't  want  her. 
I  had  had  one  experience  of  that  kind.  She 
stayed  with  me  two  years,  and  in  all  that 
time  was  never  away  over  a  meal-hour.  She 
was  as  good  a  creature  as  ever  lived,  but 
when  she  left,  I  said  to  myself,  "Henceforth 
I  shall  insist  on  days  out." 

The  fact  is,  I  have  an  unconquerable  love 
for  my  own  kitchen  and  pantries.  When  I 
was  a  child  they  were  to  me  realms  of  bliss, 
where  I  was  often  tolerated,  often  even  wel 
comed.  They  still  seem  this  to  me,  and  — 
not  to  be  tolerated  at  all  —  it  is  too  much ! 

Perhaps  that  is  an  exaggeration.  My  cooks 
have  usually  tolerated  me.  They  have  even 
been  polite  to  me.  When  I  slink  half -apolo 
getically  into  the  kitchen,  to  have  a  finger, 
so  to  speak,  in  the  pie,  they  bring  me  dishes, 
and  materials,  and  clear  tables  for  me,  and 
try  to  make  believe  I  am  not  in  the  way  —  at 
least  the  nice  ones  do.  But  they  watch  me 
furtively.  If  they  are  self-righteous,  their 
attitude  is  slightly  critical,  if  they  are  self- 


DAYS  OUT  5 

distrustful,  it  is  apprehensive:  —  what  am  I 
going  to  find  out  about  their  pantry?  And  as 
I  am  idiotically  sensitive  to  my  cook's  atti 
tude,  I  am  conscious  of  this,  and  it  spoils  the 
fun.  I  slip  out  of  my  kitchen  —  their  kitchen 
—  and  hie  me  to  other  parts  of  the  house, 
that  seem  more  truly  mine. 

But,  on  the  days  out,  —  ah,  those  deli 
cious  days  out!  For  the  cook's  outings  are 
my  innings.  She  is  happy,  too.  How  she 
works !  The  luncheon  dishes  are  whisked  out 
of  the  way,  the  kitchen  is  "redd  up,"  and  she 
flies  to  her  room  to  dress.  I  slip  out,  glance  up 
the  back  stairs,  go  to  the  range  and  poke  the 
fire,  change  the  draughts,  shift  the  kettle  a 
little,  then  hastily  retreat  to  the  parlor,  and 
play  the  piano,  with  the  soft  pedal  down, 
until  I  hear  the  back  door  shut.  Then!  No 
more  piano  for  me!  I  can  play  the  piano  any 
time. 

I  walk  swiftly  and  boldly  out  into  the 
kitchen  —  my  kitchen  —  MY  kitchen.  I  perch 
on  a  table  and  swing  my  feet,  in  a  glory  of 
possession.  What  shall  I  make?  I  go  over 
to  the  range  again.  Good  fire,  —  good  oven. 
I  can  make  anything,  anything!  A  feeling  of 


6  DAYS  OUT 

power  comes  over  me.  I  go  to  the  pantry  and 
scan  its  contents.  I  am  always  careful  to 
have  it  well  stocked  on  these  days,  that  my 
creative  impulses,  no  matter  how  freakish, 
may  suffer  no  thwarting  by  reason  of  a  lack 
of  materials.  I  pick  up  the  cook-book  and  re 
sume  my  perch.  I  am  in  no  special  hurry. 
It  is  not  yet  four,  and  one  can  do  almost  any 
thing  between  four  and  half -past  six. 

The  telephone  rings.  I  go,  with  my  thumb 
in  the  cooky  recipes.  I  lay  the  book  open 
on  the  table  beside  me,  and  my  eye  runs  over 
the  page  as  I  take  down  the  receiver. 

"Yes?  Yes,  this  is  Mrs. Oh,  Mrs. 

Grundy,  good  afternoon.  —  What?  An 
other  bridge?  Are  n't  you  a  gay  lady!  —  Oh, 
I  'm  so  sorry.  I  don't  play  well,  of  course  you 
know,  but  I  suppose  I  would  come  to  fill  up, 
only  you  see  I  can't.  It 's  my  cook's  day  out. 
(I'm  so  glad  I  ordered  molasses  this  morn 
ing!)  —  No,  I  can't  change,  she's  gone  al 
ready.  (Would  sugar-cookies  be  better,  I 
wonder.)  —  Yes,  of  course,  it  is  inconvenient 
sometimes,  but  they  do  want  their  days  out, 
don't  they? —  Thank  you,  I 'm  sorry  too.  I 
hope  you  '11  find  somebody,  I  'm  sure  you  will. 


DAYS  OUT  7 

—  Yes,  good-bye."   I  hang  up  the  receiver 
with  a  sigh  of  relief.  —  Yes,  I  think,  —  gin 
ger  cookies.  Hester  and  Tom  will  be  in  soon, 

—  and  they're  so  good  when  they're  just 
out  of  the  oven. 

I  go  back,  get  into  my  big  apron,  give  an 
other  look  to  my  fire  and  my  oven,  and  plunge 
in.  There  arises  a  delicious  odor  of  spices  and 
molasses  and  butter  —  an  aroma  of  cooking, 
in  short. 

The  front  door  opens  and  shuts,  there  is  a 
stampede  of  feet  up  and  downstairs.  Then 
the  kitchen  door  bursts  open.  "Oh,  GOOD! 
It's  Sarah's  day  out!  Hester!  Come  on.  It's 
Sarah's  day  out!" 

Hester  arrives.  "  May  we  make  the  toast?  " 
"May  I  set  the  table?"  "What  do  I  smell?" 
"May  I  stir?"  "May  we  scrape  the  bowl?" 
"May  we  make  griddle-cakes?" 

It  is  like  a  frog-chorus  in  spring. 

Perhaps  I  try  to  be  severe. 

"Griddle-cakes?  Nonsense!  Who  ever 
heard  of  griddle-cakes  at  night?  Ginger 
cookies  are  queer  enough.  Besides,  they  don't 
go  well  together." 

"No  matter!   Who  cares!   We  always  do 


8  DAYS  OUT 

nice,  queer  things  when  Sarah  is  out.  And 
we  can  eat  up  all  the  cookies  as  soon  as 
they're  done,  and  then  they  won't  interfere 
with  the  cakes." 

It  makes  really  very  little  difference  how 
it  turns  out,  what  things  finally  get  cooked. 
The  important  thing  is,  that  the  cooking  goes 
merrily  on,  and  joy  reigns. 

It  is,  I  maintain,  a  joy  to  rejoice  in.  I  am 
heartily  sorry  for  people  who  never  do  their 
own  cooking.  Cooking  is  an  art,  not  only 
creative  but  social.  It  takes  the  raw  mate 
rials  and  converts  them  into  a  product  that  is 
every  way  pleasing,  and  that  brings  the  peo 
ple  who  enjoy  it  into  social  harmony.  The 
immediate  products  do  not  abide :  the  better 
they  are,  the  more  quickly  they  vanish;  but 
they  leave  behind  something  spiritual  and 
permanent.  A  busy  mother,  who  was  a  won 
derful  cook,  once  said  to  me,  "Sometimes  it 
hardly  seems  worth  while  to  cook  things  when 
they  go  so  fast;  but  then,  I  think,  after  all, 
they  leave  behind  them  a  memory  of  a  jolly 
home-table  that  does  last,  so  perhaps  it 
pays." 

I  am  sure  she  was  right.   The  memory  of 


DAYS  OUT  9 

that  home-table  has  lasted  forty  years  and 
more,  and  does  not  yet  seem  to  be  fading. 

There  are  other  things  to  remember  about 
that  home,  there  are  other  things  that  are 
worth  while  in  any  home,  but  I  think  that 
in  our  modern  conditions  we  lose  too  much  of 
the  pleasure  that  comes  through  doing  prac 
tical  things  together.  Almost  all  the  physical 
work  of  our  daily  lives  is  delegated.  Life  is 
being  systematized  on  that  basis,  and  though 
there  are  great  gains,  there  are  also  losses. 
The  change  is  deeply  affecting  the  character 
and  quality  of  our  hospitality.  This  is  a  big 
subject,  and  I  am  not  going  to  be  drawn  into 
it  too  deeply.  All  I  want  to  say  is,  that  I  be 
lieve  we  are  letting  ourselves  be  so  involved 
in  the  machinery  of  our  hospitality  that  we 
are  cheated  of  some  of  its  pleasures.  We  have 
submitted  to  certain  conventions  of  "enter 
taining,"  and  if  we  cannot  satisfy  these,  we 
do  not  "entertain."  What  a  pity!  And  yet, 
while  I  say  this,  I  am  aware  that  I  too  am 
enslaved.  There  are  many  people  whom  I 
have  not  the  courage  to  invite  to  my  house  — 
except  on  my  cook's  day  out.  Then  I  am 
emancipated.  There  is  no  one  whom  I  dare 


10  DAYS  OUT 

not  invite,  if  I  want  her,  when  I  am  my  own 
cook.  Mrs.  Grundy  herself  may  come  and 
welcome.  And  I  believe  Mrs.  Grundy  would 
have  a  good  time.  She  might  not  ask  to  scrape 
the  bowl,  but  I  fancy  she  would  be  delighted 
to  turn  the  griddle-cakes,  or  run  out  for  the 
hot  toast. 

It  is  irresistible,  this  charm  of  doing  things 
one's  self,  of  doing  things  together.  People 
have  talked  about  the  simple  life  until  we 
are  sick  of  the  name.  But  we  are  not  sick  of 
the  thing,  the  seal  thing.  And  our  present 
conditions  are  not  satisfying  us.  They  need 
to  be  shaken  up  and  recombined.  We  cannot 
go  backward,  but  we  can,  perhaps,  while 
accepting  what  is  good  in  the  new  order,  try 
to  hold  fast  to  what  was  good  in  the  old. 
Probably  it  is  best  for  me  not  to  do  all  my 
own  housework,  but  it  would,  I  am  convinced, 
be  little  short  of  a  calamity  if  I  never  did  any. 
To  feel  that  my  cook  is  doing  her  work  con 
tentedly,  that  she  needs  her  wages  and  I  need 
my  time  —  this  is  all  very  well.  But,  like 
Antaeus,  I  must  touch  earth  often.  I  yearn 
for  the  poker,  I  hanker  for  the  mixing-bowl, 
I  sigh  for  the  frying-pan.  Man  does  not  live 


DAYS  OUT  11 

by  bread  alone,  but  neither  does  he  live  by 
taking  thought  alone.  I  love  to  think,  and 
talk,  and  feel,  but  I  cannot  forget  that  I  have 
hands  which  clamor  to  be  put  to  use,  arms 
which  will  not  hang  idle.  It  does  not  satisfy 
me  to  do  make-believe  work  that  does  not 
need  to  be  done:  picture-puzzles  and  burnt- 
wood  and  neckties.  I  want  real  work,  primi 
tive  work.  Hurrah  for  the  coal-hod !  Hurrah 
for  the  tea-kettle!  Hurrah  for  the  Day  Out! 


An  Unlovely  Virtue 

WHEN  I  was  a  child,  I  was  often  not  a  little 
hampered  by  the  fact  that  I  could  not,  with 
any  comfort,  utter  an  untruth.  Not  that  I 
had  any  inherent  aptitude  for  truthfulness,  — 
on  the  contrary,  I  was  a  lover  of  devious 
ways,  and  my  nature  was  framed  for  deceit, 
—  but  early  training  had  imposed  upon  me 
an  ineradicable  habit  of  truth-telling.  It  had 
so  wrought  that  for  me  the  lie  was  shorn  of 
every  pleasurable  association,  and  invested 
with  painful  suggestion.  My  only  compensa 
tion  lay  in  a  dim  feeling  of  superior  righteous 
ness,  but  this  was  not  very  sincere,  not  very 
constant,  and,  indeed,  not  wholly  gratifying. 
Gladly  would  I  have  relinquished  it  for  the 
ability  to  tell  a  good,  comfortable  lie  —  not  a 
bad,  malicious,  devouring-lion  of  a  lie,  but  a 
little  harmless, 'playful-kitten  of  a  lie.  Now 
and  then,  indeed,  I  did  lay  hands  upon  the 
forbidden  weapon,  but  being  unfamiliar  with 
it,  I  used  it  clumsily — lied  at  the  wrong 
time,  or  in  the  wrong  way,  or  when  there 


AN  UNLOVELY  VIRTUE  13 

was  no  need  of  lying,  and  I  never  got  any  fun 
out  of  the  lie,  and  seldom  any  advantage. 

Now  that  I  am  quite  grown  up,  my  plight 
is  worse,  for  even  the  sense  of  superior  right 
eousness  has  left  me.  I  have  been  forced  to 
recognize  that  the  most  charming,  the  most 
really  admirable,  of  my  friends  are  in  general 
people  who  can,  for  the  sake  of  harmony,  of 
good  fellowship,  of  friendship,  utter  the  thing 
which  is  not.  This,  without  disturbing  my 
habits  of  truth-telling,  has  seriously  shaken 
up  my  theories. 

For  one  thing,  I  have  come  to  realize  that 
one  must  often  tell  a  lie  in  order  to  convey  a 
true  impression,  since  the  matter  of  a  lie,  as 
of  a  jest,  — 

"  lies  in  the  ear 

Of  him  who  hears  it,  never  in  the  mouth 
Of  him  who  speaks  it." 

For  example,  a  certain  youth  was  escorting 
to  his  steamer  a  venerable  Englishman  whose 
name  stands  high  among  the  dignitaries  of 
the  Church.  Their  train  was  late,  and  outside 
the  Grand  Central,  as  ill  luck  would  have  it, 
but  a  single  cab  was  visible.  There  was  need 
of  haste,  yet  the  great  man  had  not  been 


14  AN  UNLOVELY  VIRTUE 

accustomed  to  hasten,  and  it  looked  as  though 
the  cab  would  be  preempted  by  some  of  the 
ardent  but  unimportant  New  Yorkers  who 
were  scurrying  toward  it.  The  young  man 
singled  out  an  official  and  said  impressively, 
"This  is  an  English  duke.  He  is  late  for  his 
steamer.  Get  him  that  cab."  The  cab  was 
theirs. 

Now,  according  to  the  precepts  in  which  I 
had  been  reared,  that  young  man  had  by  his 
act  seriously  jeopardized  his  spiritual  future. 
Yet,  might  it  not  be  maintained  that  he  had 
lied  in  the  interests  of  truth?  He  said  "duke," 
which  was  not  the  fact;  the  official  received 
the  notion  "great  man,"  which  was  the  fact. 
Whereas  if  he  had  said,  "Here  is  an  English 
canon,  get  him  a  cab,"  it  is  safe  to  say  that 
the  mind  of  the  worthy  official  would  have 
been  filled  with  confusion,  if  not  with  dis 
tinctly  bellicose  images  totally  foreign  to  the 
occasion. 

But  there  is  another  sort  of  lie  whose  justi 
fication  cannot  be  framed  after  this  fashion. 
There  is  the  lie,  not  in  the  cause  of  truth,  but 
in  the  cause  of  friendliness  or  of  comfort.  A 
friend  has  just  given  a  dinner.  "Did  you 


AN  UNLOVELY  VIRTUE  15 

notice  that  the  fish  was  burned?"  she  asks. 
You  had  noticed,  every  one  had  noticed.  You 
answer,  "My  dear,  I  cannot  deceive  you,  it 
was  burned."  You  save  your  soul,  but  you 
make  your  friend  miserable.  Suppose  instead 
that  you  say  cheerfully,  "No,  indeed,  it  was 
perfectly  delicious";  she  will  take  heart,  and 
think,  "Well,  it  was  only  my  nervousness." 
You  will  have  increased  the  sum  of  happiness 
in  the  world  —  but  how  about  your  soul? 

Suppose,  again,  that  your  best  friend  is 
engaged  to  be  married,  but  there  are  reasons 
why  she  cannot  announce  the  fact.  Society 
suspects,  society  insinuates,  finally,  society 
asks  point-blank,  "Celia,  is  Rosalind  engaged 
to  Orlando?"  Three  courses  are  open:  you 
may  keep  silent,  but  that  is  equivalent  to 
saying  "yes";  or  you  may  give  an  evasive 
answer,  like  the  servant  who,  when  asked  if 
her  mistress  was  at  home,  replied,  "Was  your 
grandmother  a  monkey?"  The  objections  to 
this  policy  are  obvious.  Or  you  may  take  your 
conscience  by  the  throat,  look  society  firmly 
in  the  eye,  and  say,  "Rosalind  engaged?  No, 
indeed!  What  in  the  world  could  have  made 
you  think  such  a  thing?  She  does  n't  care  for 


16  AN  UNLOVELY  VIRTUE 

Orlando,  and  anyway  he  is  really  in  love  with 
Audrey,  you  know,  and  only  flirting  to  make 
her  jealous."  Your  conscience  may  bear  for 
days  the  marks  of  fingers  on  its  throat,  while 
at  the  same  time  you  will  keep  saying  to  your 
self,  in  the  manner  of  Henry  James's  devious- 
minded  people,  —  "But  I  could  n't,  could  I, 
not  have  done  it.  No,  I  could  n't  not  have 
done  it." 

Is  there,  perhaps,  something  wrong  with  a 
training  that  leaves  one  no  comfortable  escape 
from  so  common  a  predicament?  I  myself 
am  quite  incapable  of  judging,  being  hope 
lessly  bigoted  in  favor  of  truth-telling.  A  lie 
still  seems,  in  spite  of  all  arguments,  a  bad 
thing.  But  I  am  driven  to  wonder  whether 
this  is  not  the  result  of  that  rigidity  of  temper 
and  of  habit  which  was  at  once  the  strength 
and  the  weakness  of  our  Puritan  forbears. 
My  grandfather,  a  man  of  sternest  Puritan 
traditions,  came  near  losing  his  life  through 
that  same  characteristic.  He  was  going  to 
ward  the  garden,  when  a  venomous-minded 
cow  spied  him  and  marked  him  for  her  prey. 
She  came  on,  head  down,  sharp  horns  a-prick 
for  his  gore.  A  little  grandson,  taking  in  the 


AN  UNLOVELY  VIRTUE  17 

situation,  shouted  from  the  rear,  "Cheese  it, 
grandpa!  Cheese  it!"  The  old  gentleman 
heard,  he  apprehended  danger,  but  he  hated 
slang,  and  this  particular  phrase  had  been  an 
object  of  special  abhorrence.  He  turned,  grim 
and  contemptuous,  and  used  up  his  moment 
of  escape  in  the  withering  reply,  "Cheese 
what?"  The  cow  arrived,  and  only  the  huge 
basket  that  the  old  gentleman  carried  saved 
him  from  being  impaled,  principles  and  all. 
The  long  horns  were  buried  in  the  basket,  and 
its  bearer  was  hurled  backward  through  the 
garden  gate.  And  to  the  youngster's  puzzled 
query,  "Why  did  n't  you  run,  when  you 
heard  me  tell  you?  "  there  seemed  no  adequate 
reply. 

If  Mr.  Brooke,  of  "Middlemarch,"  had 
witnessed  this  scene,  I  believe  his  comment 
would  have  been,  "Ah,  sir,  principles  are  good 
things  in  their  place,  but  don't  let  them  carry 
you  too  far  —  not  too  far,  you  know." 

And  it  is  just  possible  that  this  matter  of 
truth-telling  cannot  be  settled  by  any  rigid 
rulings  whatever.  Other  virtues  may  be  car 
ried  to  excess,  why  not  truthfulness?  It  is 
one  of  my  regrets  that  I  was  not  clever  enough 


18  AN  UNLOVELY  VIRTUE 

long  ago  to  notice  that  lying,  as  such,  is  not 
forbidden  in  the  Decalogue.  We  are,  it  is 
true,  commanded  not  to  "bear  false  witness," 
but  only  false  witness  against  our  neighbor. 
About  false  witness  in  his  behalf  nothing 
whatever  is  said :  —  that  is,  malicious  lying  is 
forbidden,  benevolent  lying  is  left  to  our  dis 
cretion.  I  should  be  quite  willing,  if  my  train 
ing  would  allow  me,  to  stand  with  Moses  in 
this  whole  matter. 


A  Brief  for  the  Hat 

I  ENTERED  the  crowded  railway  car  and 
walked  slowly  up  the  aisle,  examining  peo 
ple's  backs  to  see  which  looked  most  inviting 
as  a  seat-mate.  Ah!  Slim,  pretty  shoulders, 
and  a  head  beautifully  poised!  I  paused:  "Is 
this  seat  taken?" 

"No,  indeed,"  a  sweet  voice  answered. 
"Oh!  How  do  you  do?  Is  n't  this  pleasant?" 

Pleasant,  indeed.  I  sat  down  happily,  and 
as  I  turned  to  look  in  my  friend's  face  I  had 
an  added  thrill  of  pleasure.  There  was  some 
thing  a-little-more-than-usual  about  it.  I  con 
sidered —  yes!  the  hat!  It  had  a  little  pinch 
in  the  brim,  just  in  front,  making  a  sort  of 
gable-end,  below  which  the  face  looked  out  at 
me  with  added  piquancy.  Silly  idea  —  that 
pinch !  Yet  I  was  grateful  to  it  for  something 
it  did  to  the  always  lovely  face  beneath  it. 

The  incident  set  me  thinking.  I  have  al 
ways  been  one  to  scoff  at  the  vagaries  of 
fashion.  They  have  all  seemed  about  equally 
absurd  to  me.  But  now  I  am  growing  more 


20  A  BRIEF  FOR  THE  HAT 

tolerant,  especially  in  regard  to  hats.  I  am, 
in  fact,  evolving  a  philosophy  of  hats. 

It  is  based  on  a  fundamental  and  familiar 
trait  of  human  nature.  What  we  see  con 
stantly  we  cease  to  see  vividly.  The  faces  we 
notice  least  are  those  we  know  —  and  perhaps 
really  love  —  best;  our  eyes  are  a  bit  jaded 
by  following  the  familiar  lines.  The  same  is 
true  of  pure  color.  Water  and  sky  are  beauti 
ful,  and  you  may  suppose  that  you  are  duly 
appreciative  of  them;  but  lie  on  the  deck  of  a 
cat-boat  and  look  at  them  with  your  head  in 
an  unaccustomed  position  —  sideways  or  up 
side  down  —  and  note  how  the  colors  flare 
out  upon  your  vision.  Or  stay  indoors  for 
a  few  weeks,  in  a  room  where  you  do  not  get 
much  outlook,  and  then  go  out.  You  -frill  be 
blinded  by  the  glory  of  the  world.  But  not 
for  long.  The  glory,  alas,  fades  quickly,  and 
habit  settles  upon  you  once  more. 

With  our  friends'  faces  somewhat  the  same 
thing  happens.  When  we  first  meet  them  they 
pique  us  pleasantly  with  their  unfamiliar  line 
and  color.  Gradually  we  grow  wonted  to 
them.  The  first  vision  has  passed.  What 
then?  Must  we  turn  upside  down  to  look  at 


A  BRIEF  FOR  THE  HAT  21 

them?  Or  perhaps  turn  them  upside  down? 
Or  mew  ourselves  up,  socially  speaking,  in 
dim  back  bedrooms,  in  order  to  regain  that 
coveted  first  impression? 

Not  at  all.  Fashion  has  found  a  way.  It 
claps  a  new  hat  on  our  friend's  head  —  a  hat 
with  a  funny  nip  in  it,  or  a  queer  wiggle  of  the 
brim,  or  a  long,  soft  droop,  or  a  dashing  tilt,  or 
a  jaunty  up-fling,  or  any  kind  of  line  what 
ever,  that  has  distinctive  meaning  and  is  not 
the  kind  of  line  we  have  been  used  to. 

What  happens?  First  of  all,  we  are  inter 
ested,  our  eyes  are  challenged  anew.  Then 
the  interest  and  the  challenge  give  us  a  fresh 
interpretation.  We  see  the  familiar  face  as 
though  it  were  a  stranger's,  and  we  find  in  it 
things  we  have  never  noticed.  The  funny 
pinch  in  the  brim  may  bring  out  all  its  gayety, 
the  long,  soft  droop  may  accentuate  its  pa 
thos,  the  jaunty  up-fling  of  the  side  may  give 
it  a  sudden  brave  note.  I  have  seen  a  pretty, 
refined  New  England  face  turned  suddenly, 
by  a  sweep  of  brim  and  a  green  feather, 
into  the  face  —  pretty  and  refined  still  —  of 
one  who  breaks  bonds,  blood-sister  to  Robin 
Hood. 


22  A  BRIEF  FOR  THE  HAT 

Passing  strange,  this  witchery  of  line!  Not 
always  working  altogether  for  good.  For  if 
there  are  hats  that  we  "like"  on  our  friends, 
there  are  also  hats  that  we  "don't  like."  Nat 
urally.  Since  a  line  can  evoke  good  points,  it 
can  also  evoke  bad  ones,  and  the  wrong  line 
may  accentuate  in  a  face,  not  its  bravery  but 
its  coarseness,  not  its  prettiness  but  its  pet 
tiness,  not  its  pathos  but  its  heaviness. 

Yet  even  with  this  danger,  one  must  wel 
come  the  change,  merely  as  change.  For  the 
rest  of  us,  from  the  neck  down,  fashion  pro 
vides  some  possibility  of  this  change  that  we 
seem  so  to  need.  The  waist-line  may  be  "worn 
high"  one  year,  and  "low"  the  next.  Now 
and  then  it  may  even  chance  —  I  noted  this 
carefully  in  a  good  journal  a  while  ago  —  that 
the  waist-line  will  for  a  short  season  be  "at 
the  waist."  Shoulders  and  hips  may  be  made 
to  seem  broader  or  narrower,  neck  shorter  or 
longer,  by  means  best  known  to  those  who 
use  them.  But  features  cannot  be  so  easily 
manipulated.  At  least,  if  they  can,  the  meth 
ods  are  not,  on  the  whole,  regarded  as  alto 
gether  desirable  or  reputable.  Fashion  does 
not  quite  dare  say,  "Noses  are  this  winter 


A  BRIEF  FOR  THE  HAT  23 

being  worn  retrousse,  but  next  spring  the  tips 
will  drop  a  little,  and  by  summer  there  is  a 
chance  that  the  aquiline  line  will  come  in 
again."  Or,  "Eyes  are  to  be  large  and  round 
this  fall,  but  smaller  and  narrower  toward  win 
ter."  Or,  "Lips  are  fuller  than  they  were  in 
July,  while  chins  promise  to  be  longer  and 
upper  lips  shorter  than  for  several  years." 

No,  this  is  not  yet  done.  But  instead,  a  way 
has  been  found  to  get  some  of  the  same  effects 
of  change.  By  its  means  faces  seem  longer  or 
shorter,  noses  appear  to  raise  or  lower  their 
little  tips,  eyes  seem  to  grow  large  or  small, 
slanting  or  straight,  and  all  by  the  magic  of 
a  line,  a  shift  of  mass,  a  flare  of  color.  The 
hat!  The  hat's  the  thing! 


The  Cat  and  the  Bell-Collar 

IT   was,   by   sorrowful   count,    the   twenty- 
seventh  bird  Fur-Cat  had  killed  that  spring 

—  song-birds  all,  and  protected  by  law  from 
gun  and  trap,  but  not  from  claw  and  tooth. 
The  decree  went  forth  that  Fur-Cat  must  be 
belled,  and  a  bell-collar  was  accordingly  pro 
cured.     The  offending  one  was  called,  and 
came,  rubbing  and  purring  against  chair-legs 
and  folk-legs.   With  a  touching  confidence  he 
submitted  to  having  the  collar  fastened  on, 
and  it  settled  most  becomingly  into  its  place 

—  a  dash  of  red  melting  into  deep  gray  fur. 
When  he  was  released  there  was  a  moment 
of  pause,  then   the  purrings   and   rubbings 
changed  to  frantic  clawings  and  chewings, 
aimed  at  the  millstone  and  designed  to  re 
move  it  instantly  and  forever  from  the  out 
raged  person  of  Fur-Cat.    There  followed  a 
dash  through  the  open  door  and  across  the 
lawn. 

We  felt  anxious.   Would  the  fluffy  neck 
be  clawed  to  ravelings?  WTould  insanity  set 


THE  CAT  AND  THE  BELL-COLLAR    25 

in?  Suddenly  Fur-Cat  reappeared,  bounding 
lightly  and  gayly,  scarcely  touching  earth. 
He  came  on,  with  little  whirls  and  pirouet- 
tings,  toying  daintily  with  his  tail;  he  leaped 
into  the  air  to  paw  at  some  creature  of  his 
fancy,  he  chased  imaginary  worsted  balls 
about  over  the  grass  and  the  piazzas.  Finally, 
in  a  burst  of  enthusiasm  born  purely  of  his 
own  mood,  he  shot  up  a  tree  and  poised  him 
self,  in  beautiful  ease,  on  an  upper  branch. 

We  laughed,  and  we  marveled  a  little  too. 
Fur-Cat  was  not  young,  the  days  of  his  kit- 
tenhood  lay  in  a  dim  past.  Yet  now  the  kit 
ten  in  him  had  reasserted  itself  —  nay,  more 
than  reasserted,  for  in  his  antics  there  had  been 
not  only  all  the  gay  and  whimsical  impulses 
of  youth,  but  all  the  power  of  maturity.  It 
was  a  complete,  a  satisfying,  a  deeply  artistic 
expression  of  cat-nature  in  all  its  possibilities. 

"If  this  is  what  a  bell-collar  can  do,"  we 
said,  "let  us  give  all  cats  bell-collars." 

But  why  stop  at  cats? 

For  the  incident  set  me  wondering  how  a 
bell-collar  could  be  provided  for  this  or  that 
friend  of  mine  —  picturing  what  the  effect 
would  be. 


26    THE  CAT  AND  THE  BELL-COLLAR 

I  fancy  that  most  of  us  need  to  have  worked 
in  us  just  the  change  that  the  bell-collar 
brought  about  in  Fur-Cat.  Not  that  I  desire 
to  see  every  lady  of  my  acquaintance  bound 
ing  lightly  about  her  lawn,  or  posturing  in  the 
tree-tops,  or  toying  with  fancied  images  of 
the  air.  These  things  were  right  in  Fur-Cat 
because  he  was  Fur-Cat.  They  were  the 
expression  of  his  nature  and  therefore  beauti 
ful.  It  is  a  correspondingly  complete  and  sat 
isfying  expression  of  their  inherent  nature 
that  I  long  for  in  the  good  ladies,  and  good 
gentlemen,  of  whom  I  am  thinking. 

It  is,  perhaps,  a  habit  of  the  Northern  races 
to  repress  extreme  impulses.  It  is  certainly  a 
habit  of  the  New  Englander.  Do  we  not  know 
many  and  many  a  character  whose  natural 
colors  are  veiled  —  are  overlaid  indeed  — 
with  the  deep  gray  of  reserve  or  the  pale  gray 
of  hesitation?  These  are  they  whom  I  want 
to  draw  to  me  for  a  moment,  slip  on  the  bell- 
collar,  —  and  then  see! 

Sometimes  I  have  watched  this  very  thing 
happen.  There  is,  for  instance,  a  young  man 
who  in  ordinary  life  is  bound  hand  and  foot 
by  his  own  self -consciousness.  Eye  and  tongue 


THE  CAT  AND  THE  BELL-COLLAR    27 

are  held  in  slavery  to  it,  and  he  walks  as  one 
compelled,  looking  neither  to  the  right  nor  to 
the  left.  He  sits,  as  it  were,  always  on  the 
edge  of  his  chair.  But  give  him  a  rag  or  two 
of  costume,  and  a  song  to  sing,  and  a  miracle 
is  wrought.  He  grows  taller,  his  step  is  firm 
and  elastic,  his  bearing  has  the  grace  of  com 
plete  ease,  he  looks  the  world  gayly  in  the  eye, 
he  not  only  sings  his  song  and  acts  his  part, 
but  he  flings  out  extempore  witticisms  and 
meets  unforeseen  emergencies  with  blithe  un 
concern.  On  a  wave  of  sympathy  and  suc 
cess  he  is  carried,  not  out  of  himself  but  into 
himself.  He  enters  into  possession  of  his  own 
personality. 

And  when  the  bell-collar  is  off,  is  the  spell 
over?  Not  quite.  Something  remains.  Each 
time  the  transformation  is  effected  it  leaves 
behind  it  traces.  Some  day,  I  believe,  he  will 
no  longer  need  the  material  bell-collar.  He 
will  carry  one,  as  Rosalind  did  not  carry  her 
doublet  and  hose,  in  his  disposition. 

There  are  many  to  whom  the  bit  of  rag  and 
the  song,  or  the  speech,  bring  a  similar  eman 
cipation.  But  there  are  more  for  whom  these 
would  never  break  chains,  but  rather  fasten 


28    THE  CAT  AND  THE  BELL-COLLAR 

them  tighter.  Fortunately,  there  are  other 
bell-collars,  and  not  the  least  among  them  is 
raiment.  Undoubtedly  clothes  are  abused, 
yet  they  have  their  uses,  aside  from  those  of 
protection.  Look  at  Cinderella!  Does  any 
one  suppose  she  would  have  come  into  her 
own  place  without  the  help  of  those  gorgeous 
gowns  and  those  little  glass  slippers?  Does 
any  one  fancy  her  manners  were  the  same, 
her  eyes  as  bright,  her  wit  as  ready,  when  she 
sat  among  the  cinders  in  her  dingy  rags?  No 
indeed!  The  slippers  and  the  gowns  and  the 
golden  coach  were  an  enfranchisement;  they 
were  her  bell-collar.  The  Prince  was  never  so 
dull  as  to  fall  in  love  with  a  thing  of  satin  and 
glass.  What  charmed  him  was  the  adorable 
spirit  within,  which  these  had  served  to  re 
lease. 

Would  that  we  had  each  of  us  a  fairy  god 
mother  to  fasten  on  us,  at  the  right  moment, 
just  the  right,  the  magic  collar! 

The  world,  out  of  fairy  books,  is  chary  in 
furnishing  its  fairy  godmothers,  yet  most  of 
us  have  friends  at  whose  touch  we  become 
more  truly  and  happily  ourselves  than  at 
other  times.  They  seem  able  to  endow  us, 


THE  CAT  AND  THE  BELL-COLLAR    29 

through  some  magic  of  their  own,  with  the 
beauteous  vestments  and  the  glass  slippers 
that  free  the  spirit.  These  are  our  fairy  god 
mothers.  We  do  well  to  love  them  and  pay 
them  good  heed,  for  through  them  we  may 
enter  into  such  possession  of  the  precious 
gifts  that  we  need  have  no  dread  of  the  strik 
ing  hour.  This,  we  must  suppose,  is  what 
Cophetua  did  for  his  beggar-maid.  At  his 
glance,  the  queen  in  her  blossomed,  which 
later  all  the  world  could  see. 

Some  there  are,  indeed,  who  are  able  to 
play  the  beneficent  part,  not  to  one  alone,  nor 
to  two  or  three,  but  to  all  whom  they  meet. 
They  go  among  people  flinging  bell-collars  to 
right  and  left.  I  have  seen  such  a  person  come 
into  a  room,  and  instantly  every  one  in  it 
grew  more  vivid,  more  truly  and  happily 
individual.  These  fairy  godmothers  them 
selves  are  never  quite  aware  of  the  spell  they 
exert;  they  think,  perhaps,  that  the  room  was 
the  same  before  they  entered  it.  They  see 
people,  inevitably,  with  their  bell-collars  on, 
and  to  them  the  world  never  looks  as  it  often 
does  to  the  rest  of  us  —  a  little  colorless,  a 
little  dull,  a  little  unresponsive. 


SO    THE  CAT  AND  THE  BELL-COLLAR 

Success  to  their  magic  wands !  It  is  through 
them,  if  at  all,  that  the  boulevards  of  the 
world  grow  rich  with  golden  coaches,  and 
the  assemblies  of  the  world  grow  bright  with 
the  gleaming  robes  and  crystal  slippers  of 
spiritual  enfranchisement. 


Clubs  among  the  Cubs 

"MOTHER,  I  don't  think  it's  fair!" 

Jack  burst  into  the  room  and  dumped  him 
self  on  the  lounge. 

"What  is  n't  fair?"  said  his  mother. 

"I  got  up  a  club  with  Ned  and  Tommy, 
and  they  'lected  me  president,  and  then  I 
just  went  into  the  house  for  a  minute,  and 
while  I  was  gone  they  'lected  Tommy  presi 
dent!" 

About  half  the  history  of  the  world  is  typi 
fied  in  this  incident,  and  about  three  quarters 
of  the  history  of  politics.  But  the  aspect  of  it 
that  particularly  struck  me  when  I  heard  the 
story  was  the  extreme  youth  of  the  protago 
nist.  Jack  was  seven  years  old.  It  seemed  to 
me  that  things  were  beginning-  early. 

As  always  happens,  once  my  attention  was 
directed  to  the  matter,  other  little  incidents 
of  a  similar  nature  began  to  present  them 
selves  to  my  notice.  Six-year-old  Paul  was 
taking  me  for  a  walk  up  the  farm-lane. 

"That  'th  where  they  'nithated  me,"  he 


32  CLUBS  AMONG  THE  CUBS 

lisped,  trying  to  give  his  momentous  words 
the  air  of  a  careless  aside. 

"They  what?"  I  asked,  surveying  the  gray 
rock  half  buried  in  huckleberry  bushes. 

"  'Nithated,"  said  Paul  slowly. 

"  What's  that?"  I  asked  again. 

I  was  really  very  stupid,  but  children  bear 
a  great  deal  from  grown-ups. 

"Why,  don't  you  know?"  said  Paul  pa 
tiently.  :<  You  put  your  hand  on  it,  and  hold 
the  other  hand  up,  and  then  you  thay  —  I 
muth  n't  tell  you  what  you  thay,  becauthe 
you're  not  a  member;  and,  anyway"  —  this 
was  added  with  a  far-away  look —  "I  gueth 
I've  forgotten  what  it  wath." 

"So  you're  a  member?  What  is  it?  A 
club?" 

"A  thothiety,—  the  D.  L.  S." 

"What  does  that  mean?" 

"That  'th  a  thecret.  It  'th  a  thecret  tho 
thiety." 

"Oh,  I  see.  And  what  do  you  do?  Is  that  a 
secret  too?" 

"Oh,  we  have  meetingth  —  we  don't  do 
very  much  —  'thept  when  there  'th  thome- 
body  to  'nithate." 


CLUBS  AMONG  THE  CUBS  33 

"And  that  happens  rather  often,  I  sup 
pose,"  I  suggested. 

"Ye-e-th,"  doubtfully.  "They  'nithated 
me  latht  week." 

"And  who  else  is  in  the  society?" 

"Willie  and  Kate.  They  have  two  other 
thothietieth,  but  I'm  only  in  thith  one." 

While  I  was  still  brooding  over  this  con 
versation,  I  picked  up  a  slip  of  paper  in  a 
friend's  house,  and,  without  realizing  that  I 
was  intruding  on  mysteries,  read  as  follows: — ; 

DEAR  LILLIE  — 

I  am  going  to  get  up  another  club  Its 
called  the  S  T  S  If  you  come  over  after  school 
I  will  tell  you  what  it  means  You  can  join  it 
and  Billy  is  in  it  Then  we  can  conect  up  with 
the  other  clubs,  and  have  an  afilliation 
Yours  truly 

JAMES  BURTON 

I  was  deeply  impressed  with  this  document, 
especially  with  the  "afilliation"  idea,  and  I 
inquired  into  the  ages  of  the  persons  involved 
in  the  scheme.  James  is  nine  years  old,  Lillie 
is  seven,  Billy  is  eight.  Evidently  we  are  in 


34  CLUBS  AMONG  THE  CUBS 

an  organizing  age,  and  the  new  generation  is 
not  going  to  be  left  behind. 

Lately,  with  the  desire  of  finding  out  some 
thing  about  these  matters  from  another  set  of 
witnesses,  I  have  been  sounding  various  par 
ents  on  the  subject.  As  soon  as  I  mention  the 
word  "clubs,"  I  am  sure  to  see  some  sort  of 
vivid  expression  flash  up  in  the  face  of  my 
interlocutor.  Sometimes  it  is  amusement, 
and  there  follows  a  funny  story  about  some 
of  the  school  societies;  sometimes  it  is  sarcas 
tic;  sometimes  it  is  rather  desperate.  One 
mother  confesses  that  she  has  forbidden  her 
little  daughter  to  belong  to  any  school  club 
whatever;  one  father  has  sent  his  boy  away 
to  boarding-school  to  escape  the  problems  and 
dangers  of  high-school  secret  societies.  Ob 
viously,  I  have  stumbled  on  a  live  issue,  and 
one  that  is  puzzling  wiser  heads  than  mine. 

Puzzled  I  surely  am.  In  "my  day"  there 
were  baseball  clubs  for  the  boys,  and  sewing 
or  cooking  clubs  for  the  girls,  and  there  an 
end,  with  no  secret  societies  at  all.  Moreover, 
the  baseball  clubs  really  played  baseball,  and 
the  sewing  and  cooking  clubs  really  sewed 
and  cooked,  or  tried  to.  But  that  was  long 


CLUBS  AMONG  THE  CUBS  35 

ago.  In  those  days,  too,  the  club  life  of  the 
grown-ups  was  correspondingly  simple;  a 
charitable  sewing  society  for  the  ladies,  where 
they  met  to  sew  and  talk;  a  club  for  the  men, 
where  they  smoked  and  talked  politics  or 
science  or  whatever  interested  them;  and  for 
men  and  women  together,  a  euchre  club,  and 
perhaps  a  "literary"  club. 

But  the  plot  has  thickened.  We  are  beset 
by  clubs  on  all  sides,  and  one  of  the  chief 
problems  of  life,  if  I  can  trust  my  observa 
tion,  seems  to  be  how  to  keep  out  of  the  wrong 
ones  and  get  into  the  right  ones,  while,  with 
regard  to  the  officering  of  them,  the  predica 
ment  of  the  martyr  Jack  may  be  taken  as 
typical.  I  have  even  been  assured,  by  a  very 
high  authority  indeed,  that  most  clubs  are 
started  by  people  who  have  a  craving  to  be 
president  of  something,  and  who  therefore 
get  up  a  club  to  meet  this  "long-felt  want." 
Moreover,  it  is  apparently  a  widespread  de 
sire,  this  wish  to  "conect  up"  with  other 
clubs  and  make  an  "afilliation."  If,  then,  the 
old  cocks  —  and  hens  —  are  crowing  and 
cackling  after  this  fashion,  what  else  is  to  be 
expected  of  the  young  ones? 


36  CLUBS  AMONG  THE  CUBS 

But  I  have  no  intention  of  drifting  into  an 
argument.  I  am  merely  observing,  and  won 
dering  how  it  is  all  going  to  come  out.  Being, 
in  general,  no  friend  to  repressive  measures, 
I  have  a  feeling  that  it  will  do  little  good  to 
prohibit  clubs  and  secret  societies  among  the 
children.  I  should  rather  favor  letting  them 
go  on,  if  they  must,  but  giving  them  some 
thing  really  to  do.  Societies  that  chiefly 
"hold  meetings,"  and  "initiate,"  seem  to  my 
plain  mind  to  be  in  need,  not  so  much  of  re 
pressing,  as  of  being  given  a  job.  And  mean 
while,  I  confess  that  I  am  sorry  for  Jack,  I 
admire  James,  and  I  am  proud  that  I  know 
Paul  and  Lillie. 


The  Cult  of  the  Second-Best 

All  that  I  know 

Of  a  certain  star 
Is,  it  can  throw 

(Like  the  angled  spar) 
Now  a  dart  of  red, 

Now  a  dart  of  blue; 
Till  my  friends  have  said 

They  would  fain  see,  too, 
My  star  that  dartles  the  red  and  the  blue! 
Then  it  stops  like  a  bird;  like  a  flower,  hangs  furled. 

They  must  solace  themselves  with  the  Saturn  above  it. 
What  matter  to  me  that  their  star  is  a  world? 
Mine  opens  its  soul  to  me;  therefore  I  love  it. 

WERE  I  asked  to  choose  the  short  poem 
which  most  suggestively  expressed  the  atti 
tude  of  our  age,  I  believe  I  should  pause  long 
before  rejecting  this  one  of  Browning's.  If 
there  is  one  trait  more  characteristic  than 
another  of  our  spiritual  attitude,  it  is  our 
proneness  to  challenge  the  Accepted.  "Down 
with  the  Obvious"  is  our  intellectual  war- 
cry.  It  is  more  than  a  principle  with  us;  it  is 
a  habit.  We  are  growing  temperamentally 
incapable  of  taking  things  for  granted;  we 
are  the  sworn  enemies  of  conventional  stand 
ards,  both  in  taste  and  in  morals;  we  are  the 


38     THE  CULT  OF  THE  SECOND-BEST 

champions  of  individual  judgment.  In  the 
realm  of  morals  this  is  bringing  about  conse 
quences  so  vast  that  I  must  back  away  from 
even  the  mention  of  them.  In  the  realm  of 
taste  it  is  producing  conditions,  to  one  aspect 
of  which  I  should  like  to  call  attention. 

Which  brings  us  back  to  our  poem.  May  I 
be  pardoned  for  laying  unhallowed  hands  on 
a  thing  so  exquisite!  It  is  like  dissecting  a 
butterfly.  But  perhaps  we  need  not  hurt  him, 
and  we  can  set  him  free  again  in  a  moment. 

In  plain  English,  then,  the  poem  means, 
that  I  love  a  certain  star  because  of  qualities 
in  it  appreciated,  I  find,  in  a  peculiar  way,  by 
me.  I  do  not  share  this  appreciation  with 
others.  When  they  press  in  upon  me,  to  par 
take  of  my  vision,  "it  stops  like  a  bird,  like  a 
flower  hangs  furled."  But  when  I,  its  dis 
coverer  and  owner,  look  at  it,  it  "opens  its 
soul  to  me,"  and  —  note  well  the  phrase  — 
"  therefore  I  love  it."  As  for  the  others  —  the 
crowd  —  let  them  have  Saturn  and  welcome 
—  Saturn,  whose  wonders  any  one  can  see 
with  half  an  eye.  I  admit  that  Saturn  is  in  a 
sense  greater,  but  I  am  happy  with  my  own 
lesser  thing,  because  it  is  mine. 


THE  CULT  OF  THE  SECOND-BEST     39 

There  we  have  it!  A  turning  away  from 
accepted  greatness,  greatness  in  the  appreci 
ation  of  which  all  can  take  part,  to  the  minor 
beauty  whose  enjoyment  can  be  ours  alone. 
It  is  not  purely  a  love  of  beauty,  then,  that 
dominates  us,  but  a  glory  in  discovery,  a 
pride  of  ownership,  and,  perhaps,  an  instinct 
of  withdrawal  from  the  crowd. 

And  now  we  may  let  our  butterfly  go  again 
—  praying  that  we  have  not  brushed  the 
least  mote  of  bloom  from  his  wings. 

It  is  this  attitude,  I  think,  which  is  pecu 
liarly  characteristic  of  the  age  we  live  in.  It 
is  not,  of  course,  the  exclusive  possession  of 
our  own  time.  Touchstone  betrayed  it,  when, 
in  his  best  court  tones,  he  introduced  Audrey 
as  "A  poor  virgin,  sir,  an  ill-favored  thing, 
sir,  but  mine  own."  And  we  can  go  back  even 
further  if  we  care  to  inquire  curiously.  Prob 
ably  the  man  who  black-balled  Aristides  be 
cause  he  was  tired  of  hearing  him  called  "The 
Just"  had  the  same  feeling — which  is  only 
another  illustration  of  the  modernness  of  the 
Greeks.  He  was  expressing  a  dislike  of  the 
Obvious,  a  rebellion  against  the  Accepted, 
which  we  can  all  understand.  He  was  tired  of 


40     THE  CULT  OF  THE  SECOND-BEST 

Saturn.  Probably  he  had  some  small  star  of 
his  own  that,  for  the  reasons  we  have  just 
been  considering,  he  liked  better. 

It  is,  in  fact,  a  trait  of  human  nature,  which 
just  now  is  getting  the  upper  hand  a  little 
more  than  usual.  For  the  worship  of  the  gods 
has  always  been  encroached  upon  by  the  cults 
of  the  demigods.  There  is  something  cloying 
about  the  continual  contemplation  of  unques 
tioned  greatness,  especially  if  the  experience 
has  to  be  shared  with  the  crowd.  This  is,  of 
course,  the  real  reason  why  the  orthodox  con 
ceptions  of  Heaven  are  so  unattractive.  And, 
equally  of  course,  this  was  what  was  the  mat 
ter  with  Lucifer  —  ah,  here  at  last  we  are  at 
the  very  beginning  of  the  whole  trouble!  He 
began  it !  Not  Browning,  nor  Touchstone,  nor 
the  Greek  mugwump,  but  Lucifer.  He  was 
the  first  to  set  up  an  individual  judgment,  to 
rebel  against  the  domination  of  the  Obvious. 

There  is  nobody  to  blame,  then,  but  a  per 
son  who  is  so  in  the  habit  of  taking  blame  that 
he  can  take  a  little  more  without  turning  a 
hair.  Upon  his  broad  shoulders  we  may  load 
the  restlessness  of  all  the  uneasy  spirits  since 
the  time  of  the  First  One. 


THE  CULT  OF  THE  SECOND-BEST     41 

There  is  something  to  be  said  for  them. 
The  Great  of  the  world  do  get  a  good  deal  of 
handling.  They  show  it  a  little.  The  grass  is 
trodden  down  all  around  them,  their  toes  are 
worn  blunt  by  being  kissed,  and  they  are 
bestarred  and  be-photographed  out  of  all 
whooping.  One  can  hardly  think  of  them 
apart  from  an  atmosphere  of  perfunctory 
admiration  of  the  tourist  sort,  to  which  there 
clings  an  aroma  of  lunch-boxes  and  note 
books  and  cameras  and  picture  post-cards. 
We  cannot  approach  them  without  feeling 
ourselves  one  of  a  rabble.  "Ugh!"  we  growl, 
"let's  get  out  of  this!  Come  along  over  to 
my  Little-Great-One,  that  nobody  else  is  pay 
ing  any  attention  to.  Here  we  are,  —  no 
crowd,  no  noise,  —  the  place  is  ours!" 

Ah,  yes,  there  is  indeed  something  in  it. 
There  is  a  good  deal  in  it.  And  so  the  cult  of 
the  Little  Great  supplants  the  worship  of  the 
Great  Great. 

There  is  no  special  harm  in  this  so  long  as 
we  remember  that  there  is  a  difference  be 
tween  the  Great  Great  and  the  Little  Great. 
So  long  as  we  do  not  forget  that,  with  one  day 
of  such  treatment  as  the  Great  Great  are 


42     THE  CULT  OF  THE  SECOND-BEST 

imperturbably  submitting  to  through  the 
ages,  the  Little  Great  would  be  reduced  to 
pulp.  And  so  long  as  we  do  not  blink  the 
fact  that  in  pursuing  our  cult  we  are  yielding 
to  our  love  for  exclusiveness. 

And  though  there  is  something  to  be  said 
for  these  uneasy  spirits,  there  is  also  some 
thing  to  be  said  against  them,  certainly  when 
we  are  concerned  with  the  things  of  the 
spirit.  For  there  is  a  difference  between  the 
material  and  the  immaterial  Great  Great. 
Take  the  Matterhorn  —  it  is  a  Great  Great 
in  its  own  line,  no  doubt,  but  perhaps  —  just 
perhaps  —  we  might  be  excused  for  prefer 
ring  a  lower  peak  with  solitudes  around  it, 
to  the  Matterhorn  with  a  foreground  of  hard- 
boiled-egg  shells  and  oiled-paper  sandwich- 
wrappers.  I  am  not  accusing  the  Matterhorn 
of  such  a  foreground.  The  Touristland  Im 
provement  Society  probably  keeps  it  cleared 
up.  I  am  only  suggesting  a  hypothetical  case, 
in  which  a  material  Great  Great  might  lose 
some  of  its —  shall  we  call  it  bloom? 

But  with  the  immaterial  Great  Great  the 
case  is  somewhat  altered.  Its  audience-rooms 
may  be  always  thronged,  yet  we  do  not  have 


THE  CULT  OF  THE  SECOND-BEST     43 

to  dodge  the  elbows  of  the  crowd,  or  peer 
under  their  hats  in  order  to  get  a  view.  We 
can,  in  a  sense,  forget  them.  Only  in  a  sense, 
to  be  sure.  For  the  throng,  though  invisible, 
has  left  its  traces.  The  Bible,  for  instance, 
has  suffered  from  too  much  handling.  No  one 
who  has  been  "properly"  brought  up,  can,  I 
fancy,  ever  read  any  of  its  great  writings  and 
get  a  perfectly  pure  and  fresh  vision  of  their 
greatness.  There  are  no  egg-shells  and  sand 
wich-papers,  indeed,  but  the  fore-ground  and 
the  back-ground  and  the  middle-ground  are 
littered  with  altar-cloths  and  stained  glass, 
with  snatches  of  hymns  and  illuminated  texts 
and  the  debris  of  sermons.  Not  with  the  most 
intense  detachment  of  spirit  can  we  escape 
them  entirely.  If  on  this  account  we  leave 
the  Bible  and  betake  ourselves  say,  to  the 
Apocrypha,  we  shall  be  free  from  all  this. 
We  can  be  quite  by  ourselves,  and  we  shall 
find  many  wonderful  and  beautiful  things, 
but  in  the  end  we  shall  be  making  a  mistake 
if  we  do  not  go  back  to  our  Bible  again, 
hymns  and  texts  and  sermons  and  all. 

The  next  greatest  sufferer  among  the  Great 
Great  is  Shakespeare.     It  is  hard  to  read 


44     THE  CULT  OF  THE  SECOND-BEST 

Shakespeare  with  an  undivided  mind,  be 
cause  one  keeps  running  up  against  so  many 
"familiar  quotations."  Moreover,  some  of  us 
have  "prepared"  Shakespeare  for  the  class 
room,  for  college-entrance  examinations,  for 
B.A.  and  M.A.  and  Ph.D.  examinations,  and 
the  air  of  the  study  hangs  heavy  about  him. 
I  knew  a  young  woman  once  who  felt  this  so 
keenly  that  in  selecting  four  plays  to  be 
studied  by  her  class  she  proposed  four  of  the 
poorest —  one  of  them  not  surely  authentic — 
because,  as  she  said,  the  great  plays  were  so 
"hackneyed."  It  seemed  to  me  that  though 
her  plight  was  hard,  she  had  not  chosen  the 
best  way  out.  It  still  seems  so.  And  if  we  do 
not  find  the  better  way  of  escape  it  is  partly 
our  own  fault. 

Can  we  not  walk  free  with  Shakespeare 
and  enjoy  his  companionship  because  of  this 
network  of  trappings  —  glossaries  and  notes 
and  quotations  and  essays —  in  which  we  are 
involved?  Do  our  steps  drag?  Are  our  feet 
clogged?  Do  we  slip  harness  and  escape  to 
some  companion  whose  charm,  perhaps,  is 
less,  but  with  whom  we  can  race  along  un- 
trammeled?  The  loss  is  ours.  If  we  were  just 


THE  CULT  OF  THE  SECOND-BEST     45 

a  little  cleverer,  we  could  do  something  still 
better:  we  could  give  Shakespeare  the  wink 

—  he  would  be  ready — and  both   together 
we  would  duck,  plunge,  twist,  and — there 
we  are!   Free!  and  off  together  up  the  wind, 
with  none  to  follow.  And  then  what  a  day  we 
should  have! 

From  the  brightness  and  the  wonder  of 
such  a  day  does  it,  perhaps,  detract  some 
thing,  the  consciousness  that  we  are  not  the 
first?  Perhaps  it  does,  because  we  are,  as  we 
have  admitted,  human.  There  is  a  joy  in  dis 
covery  quite  apart  from  the  quality  of  the 
thing  discovered.  The  first  man  to  conquer  a 
peak  gets  something  that  those  who  follow 
never  find.  But  this  —  the  bead  on  the  cup 

—  is  not  for  us,  we  come  too  late.    Unless, 
indeed,  we  may  find  it  in  the  discovery  of 
some  new  Great  Great  among  our  contempo 
raries.  Some  of  us  may  have  had  intoxicating 
moments  when  we  have  at  least  thought  we 
had  done  this. 

But  for  the  most  part,  the  peaks  have  been 
climbed.  Shakespeare  and  Sophocles  and  the 
rest  have  been  read  and  read.  When  we  say 
"Wonderful,  wonderful,  and  most  wonder- 


46     THE  CULT  OF  THE  SECOND-BEST 

fill!"  we  must  be  content  to  know  that  mil 
lions  have  said  it  before  us,  and  millions  will 
say  it  after  us.  And  if  we  are  not  content, 
if  our  pride  is  humiliated  and  our  love  of 
exclusiveness  is  outraged  by  this  knowledge, 
what  then?  Shall  we  allow  ourselves  to  be 
driven  by  our  own  weakness  eternally  to  the 
society  of  the  Little  Great?  Perhaps,  better 
than  rebellion  against  the  Obvious,  would  be 
an  endeavor  to  reconquer  the  Obvious.  Per 
haps  the  thing  that  would  pay  best  of  all 
would  be  to  strive  for  freshness  of  mind, 
freshness  of  attack,  in  the  appreciation  of 
these  same  old  Great  Great. 

For  the  greatness  of  the  Great,  though 
obvious  in  one  way,  in  another  way  is  not 
obvious  at  all,  and  when  we  turn  aside  from 
them,  we  are  perhaps  moved  not  merely  by 
intellectual  priggishness,  but  also  by  intel 
lectual  indolence.  The  dainty  musical  trifle 
rests  us  when  the  great  symphony  tires  us. 
It  is  easier  to  appreciate  the  little  things,  the 
pretty  sketches,  the  rare  bits,  exquisite  but 
slight,  whose  beauty  we  can  in  a  sense  see  all 
around.  Easy,  and  also  perfectly  defensible 
if  we  do  it  only  as  a  part  of  our  aesthetic  expe- 


THE  CULT  OF  THE  SECOND-BEST     47 

rience.  But  if  it  becomes  the  whole  of  it,  we 
are  in  danger  of  falling  into  a  sterile  round  of 
easy  enjoyment  which  leaves  us  where  it 
found  us.  We  shall  never  grow  spiritually 
keen  and  muscular  in  this  way.  It  is  as  if  a 
man  were  to  spend  his  leisure  all  his  life  in 
playing  jack-straws  when  he  might  be  play 
ing  chess.  If  we  spend  all  our  time  on  the 
second-best  we  shall  lose  something  out  of 
our  intellectual  and  aesthetic  equipment, 
something  of  virility,  something  of  largeness 
and  breadth,  something  of  the  power  and  the 
willingness  to  expend  energy  in  the  under 
standing  and  appreciation  of  the  greatest 
things.  And  this  ought  not  to  be  lightly 
given  up. 

A  fresh  vision  of  the  Great  Great  is  worth 
achieving.  It  is  worth  waiting  for.  I  had 
read  "King  Lear"  many  times,  but  once  I 
read  it,  and  suddenly  it  took  hold  of  me  in  a 
new  way,  and  carried  me  along  —  breathless, 
overwhelmed,  to  the  end,  I  had  read  the 
"Antigone"  over  and  over,  but  once  when 
I  came  to  it,  it  swept  me  up  into  its  own  clear 
air:  I  saw  it  steadily  and  saw  it  whole.  Expe 
riences  like  these,  incommunicable  as  they 


48    THE  CULT  OF  THE  SECOND-BEST 

are,  are  to  be  above  all  desired,  above  all 
prized.  When  one  has  had  them  it  is  hard  to 
see  how  one  could  for  long  be  content  with 
less. 


An  Appendix  to  Bacon 

I  HAVE  often  thought  that  Lord  Bacon  might 
have  known  even  more  about  revenge  than 
he  did,  if  he  had  observed  it  in  children.  For, 
being  a  kind  of  "wild  justice,"  its  features 
are  clearest  before  they  have  been  blurred 
by  the  conventions  of  a  society  wherein  jus 
tice  is  supposed  to  have  been  tamed,  if  not 
actually  domesticated. 

Instances  of  the  juvenile  type  have  at 
tracted  my  notice  from  time  to  time,  and  I 
am  moved  to  record  three  of  them,  for  the 
use  of  some  future  philosopher. 

One  was  a  scheme  planned  by  a  practical- 
minded  little  boy,  to  take  effect  against  his 
mother.  He  spent  one  entire  afternoon,  and 
enlisted  the  services  of  his  friends,  in  making 
what  he  called  "dirt-traps"  along  the  garden 
walk,  —  a  system  of  simple  levers  so  arranged 
that  any  person  who  passed  would  strike  the 
foot  against  one  end  of  a  stick,  making  the 
other  end  fly  up  and  fling  a  little  bunch  of 
earth  into  his  face.  Of  course  the  person 


50  AN  APPENDIX  TO  BACON 

passing  was  to  be  the  unnatural  mother;  after 
so  much  industry  on  his  part,  Providence 
would  surely  take  care  of  that.  I  forget 
whether  Providence  did,  but  as  I  look  back,  I 
like  the  boy's  attitude  of  mind.  He  has  since 
become  a  scientist,  with  a  good  grasp  of  the 
concrete. 

Of  quite  another  type  was  the  revenge  car 
ried  out  by  a  little  girl  I  knew.  She  had  a 
big  brother  who  teased,  and  a  bigger  brother 
who  did  n't,  because  he  was  too  big.  Now  and 
then  she  could  pay  back  some  of  her  scores, 
but  the  accumulation  of  those  unpaid  touched 
her  soul  with  gloom.  At  last  the  children 
gave  a  play,  wherein  she,  as  the  Princess  Ariel, 
rejected  Prince  Percival  (big  brother)  and 
eloped  with  a  poor  suitor  (bigger  brother). 
At  a  certain  point  in  the  play  Percival  was 
repulsed  with  the  words,  "I  spurn  thee,  vil 
lain!  hence!  away!"  During  the  rehearsals  it 
was  suggested  by  the  coach  that  the  princess 
might  accentuate  her  scorn  by  touching  the 
kneeling  youth  with  the  toe  of  her  slipper. 
She  did  so,  gently,  tasting  the  pleasure  of  this 
new  kind  of  revenge.  But  on  the  night  of  the 
performance,  excitement  unseated  such  pow- 


AN  APPENDIX  TO  BACON  51 

ers  of  restraint  as  a  short  life  had  furnished 
her  with;  the  wild  justice  burst  forth,  and 
the  gilt-slippered  little  foot  did  not  gently 
spurn,  it  hotly  kicked.  The  princely  lover, 
unprepared,  tumbled  over  on  his  side  and 
rolled  beautifully  "down  center."  The  audi 
ence  applauded  such  spirited  acting,  and  per 
haps  only  one  of  those  present  guessed  how  in 
that  moment  the  wrongs  of  years  had  been 
wiped  out  by  a  vengeance  that  was  satisfy 
ing  because  at  once  public,  concrete,  and 
symbolic. 

But  that  which  I  admire  most  of  all  was 
planned  by  a  little  country  boy —  he  became 
a  successful  city  man  —  whose  heart  was 
filled  with  bitterness  toward  his  school 
teacher.  Not  for  him  were  the  crass  forms  of 
immediate  retaliation,  but  at  recess,  as  he 
ate  his  apple,  he  thought,  and  the  gray  eyes 
grew  dark  and  intent.  The  apple  was  eaten, 
but  the  seeds  —  ah,  they  were  shut  tight  in 
the  small  fist  until  an  unmolested  moment 
came.  Then  each  little  brown  speck  was  care 
fully  pushed  under  the  edge  of  the  school- 
house  and  jammed  down,  by  black-nailed 
fingers,  into  the  earth.  The  boy  went  back 


52  AN  APPENDIX  TO  BACON 

to  his  books,  but  the  poet's  brain  behind  the 
gray  eyes  saw  into  the  years  to  come,  —  saw 
the  unrighteous  teacher  still  at  her  desk,  the 
hateful  little  schoolhouse  still  standing,  while, 
outside,  those  little  seeds  were  bursting,  root 
ing  downward,  and  stretching  upward;  saw 
the  young  shoots  gaining  strength,  brac 
ing  and  straining  at  the  house  timbers,  till 
they  stirred  and  cracked;  saw  the  house 
wrenched  and  tottering,  the  teacher  grasping 
her  reeling  desk,  and  then  —  ruins,  with 
blooming  apple  trees  rising  in  triumph  over 
them ! 

And  meantime,  the  gray  eyes  were  bent 
on  the  book,  content  to  wait  until  the  future 
should  right  the  past.  Magnificent! 


The  Embarrassment  of  Finality 

"Live  as  if  each  moment  were  your  last." 
How  often  I  used  to  come  across  such  advice 
in  the  books  that  I  read!  At  least  it  seemed 
often  to  me — too  often.  For  while  I  ac 
cepted  it  as  being  probably  good  advice  if 
one  could  follow  it,  yet  follow  it  I  could  n't. 

For  one  thing,  I  could  never  bring  myself 
to  feel  this  "last "-ness  of  each  moment.  I 
tried  and  failed.  I  was  good  at  make-believe, 
too,  but  this  was  out  of  all  reason. 

I  still  fail.  The  probability  that  each  mo 
ment  is  really  my  last  is,  I  suppose,  growing 
theoretically  greater  as  the  clock  ticks,  yet  I 
am  no  more  able  to  realize  it  than  I  used  to 
be.  I  no  longer  try  to;  and,  what  is  more,  I 
hope  I  never  shall.  I  hope  that  when  my  last 
moment  really  comes,  it  may  slip  by  unrecog 
nized.  If  it  does  n't,  I  am  sure  I  don't  know 
what  I  shall  do. 

For  I  find  that  this  sense  of  finality  is  not 
a  spur,  but  an  embarrassment.  Only  con 
sider:  suppose  this  moment,  or  let  us  say  the 


54    THE  EMBARRASSMENT  OF  FINALITY 

next  five  minutes,  is  really  my  last  —  what 
shall  I  do?  Bless  me,  I  can't  think!  I  really 
cannot  hit  upon  anything  important  enough 
to  do  at  such  a  time.  Clearly,  it  ought  to  be 
important,  something  having  about  it  this 
peculiar  quality  of  finality.  It  should  have 
finish,  it  should  in  some  way  be  expressive  of 
something  —  I  wonder  what?  It  should  leave 
a  good  taste  in  one's  mouth.  If  I  consulted 
my  own  savage  instincts  I  should  probably 
pick  up  a  child  and  kiss  it;  that  would  at  all 
events  leave  a  good  taste.  But,  suppose  there 
were  no  child  about,  or  suppose  the  child 
kicked  because  he  was  playing  and  did  n't 
want  to  be  interrupted  —  what  a  fiasco ! 

Moreover,  one  must  consider  the  matter 
from  the  child's  standpoint:  he,  of  course, 
ought  also  to  be  acting  as  if  each  moment 
were  his  last.  And  in  that  case,  ought  he  to 
spend  it  in  being  kissed  by  me?  Not  neces 
sarily.  At  any  rate,  I  should  be  selfish  to 
assume  this.  Perhaps  he  ought  to  wash  his 
hands,  or  tell  his  little  sister  that  he  is  sorry  he 
slapped  her.  Perhaps  I  ought  to  tell  my  little 
sister  something  of  that  sort  —  if  it  was  n't 
slapping,  it  was  probably  something  else. 


THE  EMBARRASSMENT  OF  FINALITY    55 

But  no,  five  minutes  are  precious.  If  they 
are  my  last,  she  will  forgive  me  anyway  — 
de  mortuis,  etc.;  it  would  be  much  more  neces 
sary  to  do  this  if  I  were  sure  of  going  on  living 
and  meeting  her  at  meals;  then,  indeed  — 

Yet  there  must  be  something  that  one 
ought  to  do  in  these  five  minutes.  There  is 
enough  that  needs  doing,  —  at  least  there 
would  be  if  they  were  not  my  last.  There  is 
the  dusting,  and  the  marketing,  and  letter- 
writing,  and  sewing,  and  reading,  and  seeing 
one's  friends.  But  under  the  peculiar  circum 
stances,  none  of  these  things  seems  suitable. 
I  give  it  up.'  The  fact  must  be  that  very  early 
in  life  —  before  I  can  remember  —  I  formed 
a  habit  of  going  on  living,  and  of  expecting 
to  go  on,  which  became  incorrigible.  And 
the  contrary  assumption  produces  hopeless 
paralysis.  As  to  these  last  five  minutes  that 
I  have  been  trying  to  plan  for,  I  think  I  will 
cut  them  out,  and  stop  right  here.  It  will  do 
as  well  as  anywhere.  Though  I  still  have  a 
hankering  to  kiss  that  baby! 

I  might  think  the  trouble  entirely  with 
myself,  but  that  I  have  noticed  indications 
of  the  same  thing  in  others.  Have  you  ever 


56    THE  EMBARRASSMENT  OF  FINALITY 

been  met  by  an  old  friend  at  a  railroad  sta 
tion  where  one  can  stop  only  a  few  moments? 
I  have.  She  comes  down  for  a  glimpse  of  me; 
good  of  her,  too !  We  have  not  met  for  years, 
and  it  will  be  years  before  we  can  meet  again. 
It  is  almost  like  those  fatal  last  moments  of 
life.  I  stand  on  the  car-platform  and  wave, 
and  she  dashes  out  of  the  crowd.  "Oh,  there 
you  are!  Well  —  how  are  you?  Come  over 
here  where  we  can  talk.  —  Why,  —  you're 
looking  well  —  yes,  I  am,  too,  only  I  've  been 
having  a  horrid  time  with  the  dentist." 
(Pause.)  "Are  you  having  a  pleasant  jour 
ney? —  Yes,  of  course,  those  vestibule  trains 
are  always  hideously  close.  I've  been  in  a 
hot  car,  too. —  I  thought  I'd  never  get  here, 
the  cars  were  blocked  —  you  know  they're 
tearing  up  the  streets  again  —  they  always 
are."  (Pause.)  "How's  Alice?— That's  nice. 

—  And  how's  Egbert?  —  Yes,  you  wrote  me 
about  his  eyes.    WTiat  a  good-looking  hat 
you  have!   I  hated  to  come  down  in  this  old 
thing,  but  my  new  one  did  n't  come  home  — 
she  promised,  too —  and  I  just  had  to  see  you. 

—  Do  look  at  those  two  over  there !   How  can 
people  do  such  things  on  a  public  platform, 


THE  EMBARRASSMENT  OF  FINALITY    57 

do  you  see?  I  '11  move  round  so  you  can  look. 
— Why,  it  isn't  time  yet,  is  it?  Oh,  dear! 
And  we  have  n't  really  begun  to  talk.  Well, 
stand  on  the  step  and  then  you  won't  get 
left.  —  Yes,  I'll  write.  So  glad  to  have  seen 
you.  —  Going  to  be  gone  all  winter?  —  Oh, 
yes,  I  remember,  you  wrote  me.  Well,  good 
bye,  good-bye!" 
The  train  pulls  out  a  few  feet,  then  pauses 

—  one  more  precious  moment  for  epochal 
conversation  —  we  laugh.    "Why,  I  thought 
it  had  started  —  Well,  give  my  love  to  Alice 

—  and  I  hope  Bert's  eyes  will  be  better  —  I 
said,  I  hoped  his  eyes  —  Egbert's  eyes  —  will 
be  better  —  will  improve." 

The  train  starts  again.  "Good-bye  once 
more!"  I  stand  clutching  the  car  door,  hold 
ing  my  breath  lest  the  train  change  its  mind 
a  second  time.  But  it  moves  smoothly  out, 
I  give  a  last  wave,  and  reenter  my  car,  trying 
to  erase  the  fatuous  smile  of  farewell  from  my 
features,  that  I  may  not  feel  too  foolish  before 
my  fellow  passengers.  I  sink  into  my  seat, 
feeling  rather  worn  and  frazzled.  No  more 
five-minute  meetings  for  me  if  I  can  help  it! 
Give  me  a  leisurely  letter,  or  my  own 


58    THE  EMBARRASSMENT  OF  FINALITY 

thoughts  and  memories,  until  I  can  spend 
with  my  friend  at  least  a  half  day.  Then, 
perhaps,  when  we  are  not  oppressed  by  the 
importance  of  the  speeding  moments,  we  may 
be  able  to  talk  together  with  the  unconscious 
nonchalance  that  makes  talk  precious. 

I  have  never  heard  a  death-bed  conversa 
tion,  but  I  fancy  it  must  be  something  like 
this,  only  worse,  and  my  suspicions  are  so  far 
corroborated  by  what  I  am  able  to  glean  from 
those  who  have  witnessed  such  scenes  —  in 
hospitals,  for  instance.  Friends  come  to  visit 
the  dying  man;  they  sit  down,  hug  one  knee, 
make  an  embarrassed  remark,  drop  that  knee 
and  pick  up  the  other  ankle.  They  rise, 
walk  to  the  foot  of  the  bed,  then  tiptoe  back 
uneasily.  Hang  it,  what  is  there  to  say!  If 
he  was  n't  dying  there  would  be  plenty,  but 
that  sort  of  talk  does  n't  seem  appropriate. 
What  is  appropriate —  except  hymns? 

When  my  time  comes,  defend  me  from  this ! 
I  shall  not  repine  at  going,  but  if  my  friends 
can't  talk  to  me  just  as  they  always  have,  I 
shall  be  really  exasperated.  And  if  they 
offer  me  hymns  — ! 

No  —  last  minutes,  or  hours,  for  me  might 


THE  EMBARRASSMENT  OF  FINALITY    59 

better  be  discounted  at  once  —  dropped  out. 
I  have  a  friend  who  thinks  otherwise,  at  least 
about  visits.  She  says  that  it  makes  no  differ 
ence  how  you  behave  on  a  visit,  so  long  as 
you  act  prettily  during  the  last  day  or  two. 
People  will  remember  that,  and  forget  the 
rest.  Perhaps;  but  I  doubt  it.  I  think  we  are 
much  more  apt  to  remember  the  middles  of 
things,  and  their  beginnings,  than  their  end 
ings.  Almost  all  the  great  pieces  of  music 
have  commonplace  endings;  well  enough,  of 
course,  but  what  one  remembers  are  bits  here 
and  there  in  the  middle,  or  some  wonderful 
beginning.  >  If  one  is  saying  good-bye  to  a 
beloved  spot,  and  goes  for  a  last  glimpse, 
does  one  really  take  that  away  to  cherish? 
No,  I  venture  to  say,  one  forgets  that,  and 
remembers  the  place  as  one  saw  it  on  some 
other  day,  some  time  when  one  had  no 
thought  of  finality,  and  was  not  consciously 
storing  up  its  beauty  to  be  kept  against  the 
time  of  famine. 

One  makes  a  last  visit  to  a  friend,  and  all 
one  remembers  about  it  is  its  painful  "last"- 
ness.  The  friend  herself  one  recalls  rather  as 
one  has  known  her  in  other,  happy,  thought- 


60    THE  EMBARRASSMENT  OF  FINALITY 

less  moments,  which  were  neither  last  nor 
first,  and  therefore  most  rich  because  most 
unconscious. 

Live  as  if  each  moment  were  my  last?  Not 
at  all!  I  know  better  now.  I  choose  to  live 
as  if  each  moment  were  my  first,  as  if  life  had 
just  come  to  me  fresh.  Or  perhaps,  better 
yet,  to  live  as  if  each  moment  were,  not  last, 
for  that  gives  up  the  future,  nor  first,  for  that 
would  relinquish  the  past,  but  in  the  midst 
of  things,  enriched  by  memory,  lighted  by 
anticipation,  aware  of  no  trivialities,  because 
acknowledging  no  finality. 


The  Wine  of  Anonymity 

LET  me  not  be  misunderstood.  I  am  not  now 
thinking  of  the  pleasures  connected  with  the 
anonymous  letter  —  the  letter  which,  in  dis 
guised  hand,  warns  Benedick  not  to  trust 
Beatrice  too  far,  or  advises  Beatrice  to  follow 
up  Benedick  and  find  out  what  he  does  be 
tween  eight  and  nine  of  a  summer  evening. 
In  the  fashioning  of  such  epistles  there  may 
be* —  there  must  be —  a  certain  gratification, 
but  it  has  never  come  my  way.  I  have  never 
experienced  either  the  thrill  of  writing  such  a 
letter  or  the  pang  of  receiving  one. 

Nor  do  I  mean  the  fierce  but  coward  joy 
of  asserting,  in  an  open  letter,  unsigned,  that 
lago  is  a  liar  and  a  villain,  and  escaping  the 
annoyance  of  a  libel  suit  in  consequence.  This 
pleasure  also  I  have  never  tasted,  though  I 
really  have  strong  opinions  about  lago,  while 
disliking  libel  suits. 

No.  The  wine  of  which  I  speak  is  milder 
than  this  and  has  no  bitter  after-taste.  With 
out  having  either  officious  warnings  or  malig- 


62  THE  WINE  OF  ANONYMITY 

nantf vituperation  to  utter,  I  yet  find  a  certain 
gentle  exhilaration  in  being  able  to  express 
my  thoughts  without  a  signature. 

I  am,  I  believe,  not  the  only  one  to  feel 
this.  The  other  writers  in  the  Contributors' 
Club,1  entering  its  doors,  which  close  softly 
behind  them  and  tell  no  tales,  and  approach 
ing  its  social  hearth  in  the  cozy  club-room 
whose  walls  have  ears,  perhaps,  but  no 
tongues,  —  they,  too,  I  notice,  carry  them 
selves  with  a  more  buoyant  and  jaunty  bear 
ing  than  the  Olympians  who  sit  enthroned  in 
the  Body  of  the  Magazine.  There  is  a  glare 
of  publicity  about  Olympus  that  even  the 
Gods  felt — witness  the  way  they  slipped 
into  human  disguise  or  drew  on  the  tarn-helm 
when  they  wanted  to  be  really  at  ease.  Often, 
indeed,  this  was  when  they  were  up  to  mis 
chief,  but  not  always.  The  Club  members  are 
never  up  to  mischief,  and  yet  we  like  to  be 
nameless.  We  are  not  saying  anything  that 
we  are  ashamed  of,  and  yet  —  and  yet  —  it  is 
such  fun  to  use  the  tarn-helm! 

For  there  is  a  certain  relaxation  that  comes 
when  we  know  that  we  are  not  going  to  be 
held  up  to  what  we  have  said,  that  we  shall 

1  This  paper  originally  appeared  in  the  Atlantic's  Contributors'  Club. 


THE  WINE  OF  ANONYMITY  63 

escape  the  annoyance  of  being  expected  to  be 
the  kind  of  person  who  said  it,  whatever  it 
may  be.  When  we  meet  a  man  who  has  writ 
ten  things,  we  expect  him  to  live  up  to  his 
signature.  Usually  he  does  n't,  and  then  we 

grumble,  "Is  n't  he  the  man  who  wrote 

?  I  thought  so.    Well,  he  doesn't  look 

it,  does  he?"  Probably  he  is  tired  of  being 
expected  to  "look  it,"  and  does  n't  mean  to, 
and  is  glad  he  does  n't. 

In  spite  of  Emerson,  consistency  is  a  hob 
goblin.  Most  of  us  cannot  help  feeling  that 
what  we  have  said  one  day  we  are  expected 
to  abide  by  the  next,  and  this  makes  us 
careful.  We  are  brought  up  from  youth  to 
think  before  we  speak,  and  so  we  do.  We 
think,  perhaps,  three  or  four  times,  and  when 
we  have  done  our  thinking  we  have  begun  to 
suspect  that  we  are  poor  creatures  anyway 
and  might  better  not  speak  at  all;  which 
may  be  the  case  or  it  may  not.  Now  the  joy 
of  anonymity  is  that  we  speak  twice  before 
we  think.  Perhaps  —  oh,  mad  and  forbidden 
pleasure! —  we  never  think  at  all,  we  simply 
speak.  The  result  is  that  we  are  absolutely 
spontaneous  and  happy.  The  wine  of  ano- 


64  THE  WINE  OF  ANONYMITY 

nymity  has  loosened  our  tongues,  and  we 
prattle  on  in  unchecked  and  artless  fashion, 
and  often  more  pleasantly  than  when  sobered 
by  the  cold  gray  dawn  of  responsibility. 

It  is  probably  the  same  thing  at  bottom 
that  makes  people  so  much  better  company 
at  a  masquerade  than  under  any  other  cir 
cumstances.  In  the  circle  of  the  black  mask 
and  the  domino  we  have  no  name,  no  past, 
no  future,  no  self  to  live  up  to  or  down  to, 
and  the  mood  that  is  uppermost  need  never 
impose  itself  upon  a  later  mood.  We  can  be 
spontaneous  and  genuine.  No  wonder  we  are 
good  company!  For  on  the  whole  our  spon 
taneous  impulses  are  kindly  and  gay.  We 
are  almost  always  ready  to  love  our  fellow- 
men  for  an  hour,  if  we  are  not  thereby  com 
mitting  ourselves  to  loving  them  for  a  life 
time. 

It  all  seems  to  come  back  to  the  same  thing 
—  a  reluctance  to  commit  ourselves.  It  is 
easy  enough  to  be  advised,  "Let  him  say 
what  he  thinks  in  hard  words  to-day,  and 
to-morrow  let  him  say  what  to-morrow  thinks 
in  hard  words  again."  To  the  visionary  and 
recluse  this  may  be  easy;  but  those  of  us  who 


THE  WINE  OF  ANONYMITY  65 

live  close  to  our  kind,  who  take  color  from 
them,  who  can  never  do  anything  without 
being  conscious  of  an  effect  upon  them  which 
reacts  in  turn  upon  us —  such  vacillating  and 
feeble  chameleon-folk  as  these  love  to  run  to 
the  cover  of  the  anonymous,  they  wrap  them 
selves  snugly  in  its  mantle  and  mask,  and 
then — ah,  then  they  step  out  at  ease,  they 
hold  the  head  high,  they  begin  to  say,  "I 
think,"  instead  of  "it  is  sometimes  thought," 
and  "I  doubt,"  instead  of  "it  appears  doubt 
ful."  Ideas  come  to  them  with  a  rush.  They 
have  so  much  to  say,  now  that  the  saying 
does  not  commit  them  to  anything  in  particu 
lar.  They  can  confess  their  souls  without 
being  taken  too  seriously,  or,  indeed,  being 
"taken"  at  all.  They  can  berate  the  news 
papers,  and  then  settle  down  peacefully  to 
the  perusal  of  the  latest  murder  news,  and  no 
one  will  taunt,  "  I  thought  you  said  you  never 
read  the  papers."  They  can  write  an  enco 
mium  on  Milton,  and  then  take  down  Sher 
lock  Holmes  unchallenged  by  any  one.  They 
can  hurl  a  philippic  against  magenta,  and 
then  choose  a  winter  suit  or  the  dining-room 
wall-paper  of  that  color,  without  fear  of 


66  THE  WINE  OF  ANONYMITY 

reproach.  Will  any  one  say  that  this  is  not 
as  wine  to  one  who  falters? 

Perhaps  the  fear  of  consequences  keeps  us 
from  a  few  bad  acts,  but  I  am  convinced  that 
it  also  deters  us  from  many  good  ones.  It 
keeps  us  from  being  as  disagreeable  to  people 
as  we  should  sometimes  like  to  be,  but  it  also 
prevents  us  from  being  as  nice  to  them  as  we 
now  and  then  have  the  impulse  to  be. 

I  often  think  of  this  as  I  stand  beside  the 
track  in  the  country  and  watch  a  train  rush 
past.  The  engineer  is  usually  leaning  out  of 
his  window,  I  wave  to  him,  he  waves  back, 
we  smile  in  most  friendly  fashion,  and  the 
train  flashes  by.  I  am  the  better  for  the 
greeting,  and  I  hope  he  is.  Once  I  stood  on  a 
bridge  and  watched  a  slow  freight  creep  along 
under  me.  The  train  men  stood  or  lay  on  the 
top  of  the  cars,  and  as  they  passed  they  tossed 
salutations  up  to  me.  I  caught  them  all.  It 
was  great  fun.  But  afterwards  I  reflected, 
what  would  have  happened  if  that  freight 
had  suddenly  stopped  under  the  bridge,  as 
freights  sometimes  do,  or  if  the  engine  had 
blown  out  a  cylinder  or  something,  so  that 
the  intercourse  of  the  moment  threatened  to 


THE  WINE  OF  ANONYMITY  67 

be  prolonged  for  an  hour  or  two?  I  fancy  all 
those  genial  men  would  have  suddenly  stif 
fened  into  stolid  automata,  and  I  should  have 
had  a  pressing  engagement  elsewhere. 

This  is  what  keeps  happening  to  us  all  the 
time  in  life.  Our  human  intercourse  is  con 
stantly  being  thwarted  by  our  consciousness 
of  consequences.  It  is  especially  the  case  when 
we  are  young.  Young  people  feel  that  they 
can  hardly  have  an  intimate  conversation 
without  its  ending  in  a  promise  to  correspond 
or  an  invitation  to  visit.  If  we  keep  this  atti 
tude  as  we  grow  older,  the  consciousness  that 
a  moment's  intimacy  may  entail  so  much 
makes  us  pause  before  taking  the  fateful 
plunge.  How  often  do  we  draw  back  in  a 
moment  of  expansion  because  we  reflect, 
"Shall  we  feel  the  same  way  to-morrow,  or 
next  month?"  How  many  friendly  impulses 
do  we  restrain  because  we  are  afraid  the 
freight  train  may  stop,  and  something  more 
may  be  expected  of  us! 

But  sometimes  as  we  grow  older  we  come 
to  realize  that  we  have  made  in  part  our  own 
burdens,  and  missed  some  rare  pleasures.  We 
discover  that  if  we  are  honest  and  natural, 


68  THE  WINE  OF  ANONYMITY 

intimate  moments  may  prove  to  de  not  mill 
stones  but  stars.  Among  my  treasures  of 
memory  are  those  flashes  of  communion  with 
others  which  have  apparently  lighted  no 
lamp  of  friendship  needing  daily  tending.  It 
may  have  been  with  an  acquaintance  —  who 
ever  afterward  remained,  as  before,  an  ac 
quaintance  merely  —  it  may  have  been  with 
a  stranger,  standing  beside  us  for  a  moment 
in  a  crowded  shop;  or  a  seat-fellow  in  a  rail 
road  train.  The  moment  has  come,  we  have 
recognized  it,  enjoyed  it,  and  it  has  passed, 
but  it  is  none  the  less  prized. 

Perhaps  if  we  had  more  courage  we  should 
shake  off  the  tyranny  of  our  own  words  and 
acts,  and  not  need  the  mask  and  mantle  to 
set  us  free.  But  so  long  as  we  are  what  we 
are,  I  cannot  but  think  we  should  be  happier, 
gayer,  and  no  less  good,  if  now  and  then  we 
dropped  our  names  and  spoke  without  a 
thought  of  our  own  identity,  if  now  and  then 
we  donned  our  mask  and  cloak  and  fared  forth 
among  our  fellows,  freed  from  the  restraints 
of  our  own  personality. 


The  House  and  the  Hill 

IT  is  an  old  New  England  hillside.  I  say 
"old"  because  it  usually  feels  old  to  me.  Its 
patches  of  low  huckleberry  bushes,  to  be  sure, 
bear  every  year  new  and  shiny  berries,  the 
wild  roses  straying  over  its  rocks  bloom  as 
fresh  and  sweet  as  if  the  whole  hillside  had 
been  late-created,  as  though  God  had  only 
thought  of  it  last  May.  But  those  same  berry 
patches  have  been  here  for  generations,  and 
the  gnarled  little  rose-bushes  which  bear  the 
tender  blossoming  shoots  are,  perhaps,  as  old 
as  the  giant  chestnuts  near  them.  The  chest 
nuts  themselves  are  more  obviously  old, 
though  they  toss  their  creamy  plumes  of 
blossom  each  July  afresh,  and  the  rocks  — 
the  hillside,  being  truly  of  New  England,  is 
almost  all  rock  —  are  older  still. 

Now  and  then,  walking  slowly  up  one  of 
the  faint  cow-paths  that  wind  among  huckle 
berry  and  sumach,  I  have  picked  up  an  Indian 
arrow-head  lying  under  a  ledge  as  though 
dropped  there  but  yesterday.  It  is  as  if  a 


70          THE  HOUSE  AND  THE  HILL 

wave  of  the  retreating  past  had  swept  up  and 
licked  about  my  feet,  and  I  am  set  wondering 
about  the  past  yet  more  remote  —  so  remote 
that  its  waves  can  never  stir  me  with  even 
the  tiniest  left-over  wave  of  reminiscence. 

I  have  always  loved  the  hill.  I  felt  that  I 
knew  it  well,  and  through  knowledge  and 
affection  had,  in  a  sense,  earned  the  right  to 
call  it  mine.  One  day,  I  set  up  a  little  canvas 
house  upon  it — one  room  only,  with  win 
dows  on  all  sides.  And  when  I  entered  it  and 
looked  out  upon  my  hill  I  found  that  some 
thing  had  happened.  The  hillside  had  become 
"outdoors."  It  had  become  this  in  a  new 
way  because  I  had  created,  in  its  midst,  "in 
doors."  Hitherto,  as  I  wandered  here,  or  sat 
on  its  rocks,  or  lay  on  its  thinly  grassed  sides, 
I  had  thought  little  about  its  aspects,  I  had 
never  really  held  it  from  me  to  think  about  it 
at  all;  I  had  been  a  part  of  it,  like  the  wasps 
among  the  berries  or  the  bees  among  the 
roses.  But  now  suddenly  I  found  that  I  was 
holding  it  away  from  me. 

Perhaps  I  had  lost  something;  certainly  I 
had  gained  something.  For,  as  I  looked  out 
through  the  wide,  low  windows,  I  found  it 


THE  HOUSE  AND  THE  HILL  71 

more  beautiful  than  it  had  ever  been  before 
—  more  vivid,  more  thrilling.  There  was  the 
western  outlook  —  the  hillside  falling  steeply 
away  toward  the  gay  green  of  the  swamp 
meadow  below,  the  lane  winding  at  its  foot 
up  the  opposite  hill  toward  the  huddle  of 
gray  roofs  under  dark  maples.  I  had  never 
noticed  how  the  lane  "composed"  with  roofs 
and  maples  and  swamp.  There  was  the 
southern  —  sloping  in  a  tenderer  curve,  past 
wood-edges  pushing  in  on  both  sides,  toward 
the  distance  where  a  deep  green  hill  rose  into 
the  sky.  There  was  the  eastern  —  a  level 
pasture  full  of  rocks  and  huckleberries  and 
bounded  by  woods  whose  shadows  baffled 
the  eye.  There  was  the  northern —  the  rock 
ledges  of  silver-gray,  rising  rough  against  the 
blue,  with  deep-green  cedars  set  stiffly  about, 
and  clumped  thorn-bushes  which  in  the  au 
tumn  would  be  gay  with  berries.  It  seemed  as 
if  I  had  never  really  seen  cedars  until  I  saw 
them  framed  by  the  window  of  my  house: 
delightful  New  England  trees  that  they  are, 
prim  and  uncompromising,  rough  and  yet 
conventional,  a  little  scratchy  even  to  the 
eye,  yet  full  of  a  real  distinction  in  the  com- 


72  THE  HOUSE  AND  THE  HILL 

pleteness  of  their  individuality.  And  sensi 
tive!  Responsive  in  their  color  to  every 
change  of  the  sky  or  season,  responsive  in 
their  delicate  sea-weed-like  tips  to  each 
breath  of  wind,  and  swaying  to  the  bigger 
gusts  with  their  whole  stiff,  spiring  height. 

It  is  not  the  first  time  I  have  had  this 
experience.  Often,  as  I  have  walked  along 
a  country  road,  idly  pleased  with  the  world 
about  me,  I  have  passed  an  old  barn,  with 
great  doors  flung  wide,  front  and  back,  so  that 
one  could  look  through  them  to  the  meadows 
behind.  It  is  the  same  country  I  have  been 
passing,  —  fields,  bushes,  fence-lines,  a  bit 
of  hill  and  sky,  —  but  the  great  doorways 
framing  it  in  timbers  and  shadow  create 
thereby  a  certain  enhancement  of  its  values, 
so  that  invariably,  looking  through,  one  gets 
one's  impression  with  something  added  —  a 
heightening  of  perception  that  is  strangely 
arresting. 

What  is  it  that  the  big  barn  doors  do?  They 
limit,  of  course,  they  cut  a  little  piece  out 
from  the  wholeness  of  things,  they  say  to  us, 
"Nevermind  the  rest,  take  just  this,  look  at 
it  in  just  this  way  —  and  now  see  how  beauti- 


THE  HOUSE  AND  THE  HILL  73 

ful  it  is!"  They  play  the  artist  to  us  for  a 
moment,  forcing  upon  us  our  point  of  view, 
selecting  our  subject,  adjusting  the  lights, 
and  —  perhaps  greatest  service  of  all —  sug 
gesting  to  us,  or  rather,  imposing  upon  us, 
that  sense  of  distance  that  is  so  necessary  a 
part  of  the  aesthetic  experience. 

This,  too,  is  done  for  me  by  the  broad,  low 
windows  of  my  little  hillside  house  —  this 
and  something  more.  For  the  house  gives 
zest  to  the  hillside,  as  the  hillside  to  the  house, 
by  its  contrast  of  within  and  without.  Out 
doors  means  more  to  me  by  reason  of  having 
indoors  too. 

These  things  have  set  me  pondering —  pon 
dering  upon  the  virtues  of  limitation  and  the 
powers  that  inhere  in  bonds.  Parallels  are 
dangerous  things  to  play  with,  yet  I  am 
tempted  to  play  with  one  now.  We  are  in  a 
generation  that  jeers  at  dogma  and  is  impa 
tient  of  creeds,  yet  may  it  not  be  that  these 
have  done  for  races  what  the  open  barn  door 
does 'for  the  passer-by?  Engulfed  in  the  cos 
mos,  infinitesimal  part  of  the  great  whole,  we 
have  no  real  awareness  of  it.  But  frame  it  in 
dogma,  confine  it  in  a  creed,  and  it  becomes 


74          THE  HOUSE  AND  THE  HILL 

ours  in  a  certain  vividness  of  apprehension 
born  of  the  artificial  limits  we  have  set  up. 
True,  the  race  pays  a  price;  it  gives  up  all  but 
the  small  moiety  that  can  be  viewed  through 
that  special  creed.  But  the  traveler,  also, 
would  not  linger  forever  before  the  same  barn 
door.  He  passes  on,  enriched.  And  so  the 
races  have  passed  on  from  creed  to  creed,  and 
in  each  have  found,  in  some  sort,  both  riches 
and  poverty,  enlightenment  and  ignorance. 

It  is  true  with  all  thought,  all  feeling,  the 
entire  circle  of  experience.  As  soon  as  we 
define,  as  soon  as  we  express,  we  gain  some 
thing,  though  we  perhaps  also  give  up  some 
thing.  In  order  to  achieve,  we  must  forego. 
No  one,  I  fancy,  ever  wrote  a  poem  or  painted 
a  picture  without  being  aware,  at  least  dimly, 
of  a  vast  something  that  he  was  giving  up. 
When  artists  feel  this  very  keenly,  struggling 
against  it,  striving  for  the  gain  without  the 
loss,  we  sometimes  perceive  it  and  call  them 
symbolists.  But  for  us  there  is  no  loss,  only 
great  gain.  For  us,  all  great  poems,  all  pic 
tures,  all  works  of  art,  are  as  great  doors 
flung  wide,  as  windows  looking  north  or  east 
or  south  or  west,  framing  some  part  of  the 


THE  HOUSE  AND  THE  HILL          75 

beauty  of  the  world  which  without  them  we 
should  never  so  deeply  perceive. 

But  there  is  a  further  parallel  which  I 
would  fain  play  with.  My  little  house,  giving 
me  my  center  of  indoors  from  which,  or  even 
because  of  which,  to  enjoy  the  widening 
circles  of  outdoors  —  it  is  a  symbol  to  me 
of  my  own  individuality.  The  supreme  joy, 
some  say,  is  to  lose  one's  self  in  the  infinite. 
Perhaps,  but  let  us  not  forget  that  there 
would  be  no  point  to  this  if  we  had  not  first 
a  self  to  lose.  It  is  a  joy  to  me  to  gaze  out  of 
my  windows,  to  go  out  of  my  door  and  enter 
into  the  great  sea  of  outdoors  that  surges  up 
even  to  the  canvas  walls  of  my  little  house. 
But  these  walls  are  what  give  its  own  color  to 
my  joy.  So  it  is,  too,  with  the  barriers  of  my 
self.  I  should  be  loath  to  let  them  down, 
slight  though  they  seem,  and  poor  though  that 
within  may  prove  when  scanned  for  its  own 
static  values.  For  how  can  we  appreciate 
anything  save  through  difference?  And  what 
can  the  infinite  be  to  me  unless  I  can  approach 
it  from  something  that  is  not  infinite? 

It  is  idle  to  reason  about  such  things,  yet 
still  I  play  with  my  childish  symbols.  I  even 


76  THE  HOUSE  AND  THE  HILL 

picture  myself,  a  tiny  house,  flying  through 
the  Cosmos  —  so  small,  so  unimportant,  yet 
so  persistently  and  joyously  finite,  so  inalien 
ably  and  joyously  possessed  of  its  own  in- 
doorness,  in  the  midst  of  that  wide  outdoors. 
It  is  a  presumptuous  fancy,  yet  when  I  frown 
upon  it,  it  only  smiles  back  at  me  —  the 
fancy  that  without  this  element  even  the 
hillsides  of  Nirvana  might  lack  piquancy,  — 
that  even  upon  their  limitless  reaches  I  must 
needs  maintain  the  walls,  frail  but  valiant,  of 
my  own  self. 


Humor  and  the  Heroine 

I  HAVE  of  late  been  mingling  afresh  with  the 
heroines  of  our  greater  English  fiction,  hold 
ing  converse  with  this  lady,  sitting  a  while 
beside  that,  sending  a  word  or  a  smile  to 
another  and  another,  renewing  old  intimacies 
with  many.  They  are  a  fair  and  gallant  com 
pany,  and  it  is  good  to  be  with  them.  They 
are  wise  and  sweet,  passionate,  strong  and 
brave,  beautiful  almost  always,  good  on  the 
whole,  and,  without  fail,  interesting.  Yet  I 
felt  the  lack  of  one  last  grace  —  a  sense  of 
humor.  Their  families  often  have  it,  their 
servants  sometimes,  their  authors  almost  al 
ways  have  it,  but  the  ladies  themselves,  they 
have  it  not. 

There  was  Maggie  Tulliver:  in  the  heart 
of  a  richly  humorous  society,  wherein  her 
own  father  and  mother  and  aunts  were  the 
shining  luminaries,  she  saw  none  of  the  hu 
mor,  she  only  felt  the  pain  —  for  it  is  the  light 
touch  that  tickles,  the  heavy  impact  hurts  or 
stuns.  And  so,  where  another  nature  might 


78          HUMOR  AND  THE  HEROINE 

have  smiled  at  the  narrowness  and  the  ig 
norance  and  the  intolerance,  her  spirit  was 
crushed  by  it,  or  driven  to  desperate  rebel 
lion. 

And  Dorothea!  If  her  grave  gray  eyes 
could  have  been  lighted  by  a  gleam  of  humor, 
in  how  different  an  aspect  would  the  world 
around  her  have  presented  itself  to  her;  she 
might  have  regarded  Sir  James  with  less  im 
patience  and  Casaubon  with  less  veneration, 
she  would  probably  have  been  saved  from 
being  his  wife,  and  would  have  missed  the 
wisdom  and  the  pain  which  that  experience 
brought  to  her.  She  would  have  forfeited  the 
joy 'of  cherishing  certain  ideals,  but  would 
have  been  spared  the  pain  of  seeing  them 
shattered.  Possibly,  too,  she  would  have  lost 
her  power  of  appealing  to  some  natures,  as 
well  as  her  desire  to  do  so  —  for  Mr.  Cad- 
wallader,  it  will  be  remembered,  who  was 
richly  endowed  with  the  humorous  sense,  felt 
no  call  to  reform  the  world.  Surely,  even  the 
faintest  light  of  humor  on  her  face  would  have 
repelled  Rosamond  Vincy  in  a  critical  mo 
ment,  and  checked  her  impulse  of  confidence. 
But  she  would  have  been  happier,  perhaps 


HUMOR  AND  THE  HEROINE  79 

saner,  and,  who  knows,  she  might  even  have 
built  better  houses  for  the  poor. 

Thackeray's  ladies  are  of  another  sort,  yet 
humor  sits  not  upon  their  brows.  From  Bea 
trix  Esmond  there  dart  now  and  then  flash 
ing  sword-blades  of  cynicism,  murderous 
rather  than  lambent.  Becky's  is  Mephisto- 
phelian  wit  that  blasts,  while  poor  little 
Amelia  has  no  wit  of  any  sort,  barely  head 
enough  to  carry  her  through  the  plainer  is 
sues  of  life,  and  that  not  without  bungling. 
Ethel  Newcome,  indeed,  might  under  better 
nurture  have  sent  out  a  light  of  humor,  but  it 
was  turned  to  flashes  of  sardonic  wit  aimed  at 
a  social  order  that  she  scorned  yet  bowed  to. 

Scott's  damsels  have  not  even  these  latent 
powers.  Gay  or  stately,  serene  or  passionate, 
they  are  at  one  in  this.  As  Chaucer's  nun 
rides  demure  and  undiscerning  in  the  road 
side  company  whose  humorous  aspects  Chau 
cer  himself  so  keenly  enjoyed,  so  these  ladies 
move  in  a  world  of  chivalry  and  of  jollity, 
touched  by  emotions  of  pity  and  of  prudery, 
of  love  and  of  alarm,  but  never  touched  by 
humor. 

The  Bronte  novels  are  without  even  mod- 


80          HUMOR  AND  THE  HEROINE 

erately  cheerful  accessories  —  not  an  expan 
sive  butler,  a  relaxed  monk,  or  a  jesting 
grave-digger  —  to  mitigate  the  nightmare  de 
pression  of  their  down-trodden  though  fitfully 
remonstrant  heroines,  bullied  along  by  their 
fierce  or  sullen  heroes. 

In  contemporary  fiction  there  is  no  better 
tale  to  tell.  Mrs.  Ward  has  sent  out,  one  after 
another,  a  series  of  strenuous  dames,  from  the 
Katharine  of  "Robert  Elsmere,"  with  her 
austere  and  chilling  virtue,  to  Lady  Rose's 
daughter,  with  less  virtue  and  more  charm, 
who,  if  she  had  been  endowed  with  humorous 
insight,  could  better  have  endured  her  servi 
tude  to  so  splendid  a  mark  for  the  comic  spirit 
as  Lady  Henry.  Miss  Wilkins's  young  wo 
men  pass  before  us,  a  pathetic  company,  with 
faces  worn  though  sweet,  and  spirits  repressed 
though  brave.  The  brilliant  ladies  of  our 
myriad  "historical"  romances  are  content  to 
be  brilliant  merely  in  face  and  robing  and  in 
the  deeds  of  their  lovers ;  they  are  not  so  much 
great  in  themselves  as  the  occasion  of  great 
ness  in  others. 

Scanning  the  fair  company  of  heroines,  I 
have  indeed  found  a  few  upon  whose  faces 


HUMOR  AND  THE  HEROINE          81 

plays  a  light  of  real  humor,  but  these  excep 
tions  may  be  counted  on  one's  fingers.  There 
is  Meredith's  Diana,  there  is  his  Clara  Mid- 
dleton,  perplexed,  ensnared,  yet  with  eyes  in 
whose  depths  lurk  the  dancing  imps  that  her 
creator  himself  invoked  to  his  aid.  They 
helped  her  to  her  final  escape  from  the  Mon 
ster,  goading  her  and  jeering  at  her  by  turns 
as  she  fluttered  under  his  hand,  but  always, 
though  with  flickering  lights,  exhibiting  to  her 
humorous  sense  the  comic  aspects  of  that 
same  Monster.  Stevenson,  who  made  few 
women,  made  one,  Barbara  Graham,  in  whose 
eyes  gleams  the  delicious  mockery  that  is  both 
wise  and  kind.  Jane  Austen,  herself  endowed 
with  an  exquisite  perception  of  the  humor  in 
the  society  about  her,  vouchsafed  the  same 
gift  of  vision  to  the  most  charming  of  her 
heroines,  Elizabeth  Bennett.  With  dancing 
eyes  Elizabeth  observes  them  all,  —  her 
family,  her  neighbors,  her  suitor  the  unpar 
alleled  Mr.  Collins,  her  lover  the  formidable 
Mr.  Darcy,  and  his  aunt  the  overpowering 
Lady  de  Burgh.  She  girds  at  them  with  her 
nimble  tongue,  whose  wit,  a  trifle  too  sharp- 
edged  at  first,  is  softened  by  sorrow  and  fail- 


82  HUMOR  AND  THE  HEROINE 

ure  until  its  gayety  is  only  kind.  Sweet  girl! 
If  Maggie  Tulliver  could  but  have  looked  on 
her  world  as  Elizabeth  regarded  hers !  A  few 
flicks  from  Elizabeth's  tongue,  the  sort  that 
proved  so  beneficial  to  the  high-and-mighty 
Darcy,  would  have  done  Tom  Tulliver 
worlds  of  good.  But  Maggie's  weapons  were 
of  a  different  fashion,  and  their  shafts  always 
rebounded  to  wound  the  sender.  Curious,  is 
it  not,  that  with  George  Eliot's  own  strong 
sense  for  the  humor  of  life,  her  heroines  —  or 
heroes  either,  for  that  matter  (consider 
Daniel  Deronda  and  Felix  Holt  and  Adam 
Bede !)  —  should  have  been  so  utterly  devoid 
of  it.  One  exception  there  is,  in  Esther  Lyon, 
the  dainty  and  difficult,  who,  but  for  a  touch 
of  querulousness,  belongs  rather  in  Miss 
Austen's  circle  and  might  have  been  a  more 
satisfying  friend  to  Elizabeth  Bennett  than 
any  she  possessed. 

Yet  if  woleave  the  novelists  and  turn  to  the 
master  playwright,  we  find  gayety  enough. 
There  is  Rosalind,  the  brave  and  merry- 
hearted,  taking  her  life's  misfortunes  in  both 
hands  and  turning  them  first  to  jest  and  then 
to  joy.  There  is  Viola,  breathing  a  delicate 


HUMOR  AND  THE  HEROINE  83 

fragrance  of  humor  where  she  passes.  There 
is  Portia,  with  a  gleam  in  her  eye  as  she  enters 
in  her  legal  vestments,  the  gleam  kindling  in 
to  a  humorous  justice  toward  the  Jew  and  a 
humorous  jest  toward  the  Christian.  There  is 
Beatrice  the  royal-hearted,  with  her  sound, 
true  laughter  and  her  sound,  true  scorn, —  a 
queenly  heroine,  tragedy  draws  back  before 
her  tread,  she  masters  it  in  its  beginning. 

Yes,  from  Rosalind,  from  Beatrice  tragedy 
falls  away.  And  is  this  the  reason  why  our 
heroines  for  the  most  part  know  not  humor? 
Is  it  that  its  possession  gives  one  a  kind  of 
armor  against  adversity,  an  immunity  from 
attack,  a  mastery  of  the  world  in  place  of  sub 
jection  to  it?  Perhaps.  There  are  those  who 
have  not  this  mastery,  who  are  born  to  be 
hurt,  to  be  flung  down,  to  be  conquered  or  to 
conquer  only  through  panting  struggle;  and 
these  are  they  the  artist  seeks,  on  the  watch 
always  for  the  shock  of  conflict,  the  clash  of 
nerves  and  hearts.  The  "interesting"  tem 
perament  is  the  passionate,  the  impetuous, 
not  the  temperate  and  controlled.  Humor 
implies  a  certain  remoteness,  aloofness,  which 
quenches  the  ardor  of  the  adventure.  It  im- 


84  HUMOR  AND  THE  HEROINE 

plies  balance,  sense  of  proportion,  of  values, 
and  this  brings  the  poise  and  control  not 
shared  by  those  who  struggle  for  life  in  mid 
stream.  Yet  it  is  the  struggle  for  life  that  the 
artist  seeks  to  depict  and  his  public  yearns  to 
witness. 

Must  it  be  so?  Would  there  not  be  some 
thing  yet  more  poignant  in  struggle  and  suffer 
ing,  if  it  were  accompanied,  illuminated  by  a 
humorous  sense,  turned  inward  to  accent  the 
folly  of  it  all?  Lear's  fool  seems  to  some  of  us 
more  pathetic  than  his  master  by  virtue  of  this 
very  consciousness,  and  the  appeal  of  Cyr 
ano  de  Bergerac  is  accentuated  by  the  lurk 
ing  smile  of  the  sufferer  as  he  regards  him 
self.  But  who  will  create  for  us  such  a  figure? 
From  the  novelists  there  is,  as  we  have  seen, 
little  to  expect.  Among  the  poet-dramatists, 
whether  we  accept  the  leadership  of  Ibsen 
or  Maeterlinck  or  D'Annunzio  or  Sardou  or 
Phillips,  there  is  scarcely  a  rift  in  the  cloud 
of  conscious  and  conscientious  seriousness. 
Obviously,  we  must  wait. 


The  Humor-Fetish 

IN  every  period  and  every  land  people  have 
had  their  pet  virtues.  The  Athenians  adored 
wit,  and  the  Spartans  health;  the  Hebrews, 
at  least  retrospectively,  honored  the  gift  of 
prophecy;  the  Romans  the  virtue  of  self- 
control,  the  Quakers  the  virtue  of  peace- 
ableness.  Pioneers,  the  world  over,  worship 
bravery  and  resourcefulness  —  the  virtues  of 
aggression;  settled  societies  appreciate  fair- 
mindedness  and  rectitude  —  the  virtues  of 
restraint;  aristocracies  affect  the  virtues  of 
conformity. 

All  virtues  are  good,  though  perhaps  none 
of  them  so  superlatively  and  exclusively  good 
as  each  has  at  some  time  been  deemed.  But 
just  now  it  would  seem  that  in  the  general 
estimation  they  are  all  about  to  yield  preced 
ence  to  one  which  is,  comparatively  speaking, 
a  new-comer,  usually  known  as  the  Sense  of 
Humor. 

Not  but  that  men  have  always  laughed. 
But  their  laughter  was  grounded  in  brutality, 


86  THE  HUMOR-FETISH 

and  it  was  long  before  it  took  on  any  signifi 
cance  that  we  should  now  call  humorous.  The 
Athenians,  to  be  sure,  had  attained  humor, 
but  later  Europeans,  in  this  respect  as  in 
many  others,  did  not  climb  from  their  shoul 
ders;  they  had  to  begin  at  the  bottom,  just 
as  if  Aristophanes  had  never  made  the  very 
heavens  rock  with  laughter.  And  it  was  a 
long  way  up  from  the  half-Latinized  Goth 
and  Celt  to  Shakespeare  and  Moliere  and 
Lamb  and  Meredith. 

No  wonder  that  we  should  be  dazzled  by  a 
virtue  for  all  practical  purposes  only  a  few 
centuries  old,  and  still  growing.  But  we  ought 
not  to  be  dazzled  too  long,  and  it  really  seems 
as  if  this  new  virtue  were  becoming  some 
thing  of  a  fetish.  A  young  man  said  gravely 
the  other  day,  "  One  can't  get  to  heaven  with 
out  a  sense  of  humor,  you  know."  A  gentle 
man  writes  from  England  to  the  editors  of  an 
American  school  paper  to  inquire  into  the 
status  of  the  sense  of  humor  among  American 
boys,  as  compared  with  English.  The  word 
"humor"  is  on  every  one's  lips.  Humor  is  the 
one  thing  needful.  We  are  warned  against 
choosing  friends  who  lack  it;  and  as  for  mar- 


THE  HUMOR-FETISH  87 

riage,  if  both  parties  do  not  possess  it  the 
altar  is  but  a  prelude  to  the  divorce  court,  if 
not  to  suicide.  If  any  man  fail  of  success  in 
any  way,  we  are  told  that  it  is  because  he 
lacks  humor;  if  he  is  dissatisfied  with  existing 
conditions,  this  accounts  for  it.  Nearly  every 
human  vagary,  from  eccentricities  in  dress  to 
curious  tastes  in  the  naming  of  children,  is 
ascribed  to  the  absence  or  inadequacy  of  this 
one  virtue.  Everything,  from  dinner-parties 
to  matrimony,  must  be  ordered  with  a  view  to 
this  test. 

Now,  humor  is  a  pleasant  thing,  and  a  good 
thing;  but  perhaps  it  is  being  a  little  overdone, 
and  overdone  with  a  touch  of  priggery  and 
a  touch  of  stupidity.  The  priggery  lies  in 
the  assumption,  always  apparent,  that  we, 
the  speaker  and  his  companions,  possess  this 
jewel,  this  last  gift,  and  we  are  filled  with  a 
self-congratulatory  glow  as  we  consider  those 
poor  unfortunates  who  are  not  thus  endowed. 
It  is  the  Pharisee  hugging  himself  for  his  own 
virtues,  though  the  particular  virtue  chosen 
is  one  which  was  probably  not  valued  by  the 
original  Pharisee.  I  know  of  nothing  more 
complete  than  the  arrogance  of  the  man  who 


88  THE  HUMOR-FETISH 

laughs  at  a  joke  towards  the  man  who  does 
not  —  an  arrogance  so  absolute,  indeed,  that 
its  only  manifestation  is  often  a  tolerant  and 
amused  pity.  As  a  people,  we  Americans 
have  assumed  for  ourselves  the  position  of 
those  who  laugh,  with  the  other  nations  of 
the  world  falling  into  line  behind  us,  according 
to  their  respective  capacity  in  this  one  matter. 
But  some  of  us  who  have  chanced  to  encoun 
ter  the  jocular  American  abroad  must  have 
wished  that  other  virtues  than  humor  had 
been  a  little  more  emphasized  in  his  home 
circle. 

The  touch  of  stupidity  lies  in  the  assump 
tion  that  the  sense  of  humor  is  a  simple  char 
acteristic,  like  blueness  of  eyes,  or  a  defin 
ite  possession,  like  pennies,  that  people  may 
have  or  not  have,  in  varying  and  ascertain- 
able  quantities.  Indeed,  whenever  we  begin 
to  sort  people  out  into  classes  according  to 
their  characteristics,  we  usually  get  into 
trouble.  And  of  all  unhelpful  classifications, 
the  worst  is  this  one  based  on  the  possession 
of  a  sense  of  humor.  It  is  almost  as  unman 
ageable  as  the  one  based  on  goodness  and 
badness,  so  called,  which  has  at  least  the 


THE  HUMOR-FETISH  89 

sanction  of  tradition,  though  it  has  led  to  lit 
tle  but  bewilderment.  We  all  know  Aucassin's 
frank  comments  on  the  personnel  of  Heaven, 
as  thus  determined;  and  many  before  and 
since  his  time  have  felt  as  he  did.  But  if  the 
sense  of  humor,  instead  of  goodness,  is  to 
be  made  the  condition  of  entrance,  the  society 
there  will  be  different  indeed,  but  perhaps 
even  queerer.  Thersites  and  Henry  VIII  will 
get  in,  but  Milton  and  Seneca  will  not.  Lin 
coln  will  be  safe,  to  be  sure,  and  Hawthorne 
may  slip  past  the  gate  unchallenged,  but 
hardly  Emerson.  For  Cromwell  and  Napo 
leon,  for  Coleridge  and  John  Stuart  Mill, 
there  will  be  no  hope.  And  as  for  those  others 
whom  we  know  even  better  than  these —  Ros 
alind  and  Hamlet  and  Beatrice  and  Mercu- 
tio  —  it  will  be  well  with  them ;  but  Perdita 
and  Isabella  and  Miranda  must  remain  out 
side  with  Malvolio  and  Polonius,  although  it 
may  comfort  them  to  find  Hector  and  Achilles 
and  Prospero  and  Horatio  in  their  company. 
The  trouble  all  comes  from  trying  to  base 
any  classification  at  all  on  so  elusive  a  quality 
as  this  so-called  sense  of  humor.  For  it  is  not 
all  one  thing,  or  even  degrees  of  one  thing.  It 


90  THE  HUMOR-FETISH 

is  so  protean  a  quality,  so  dependent  for  its 
value  upon  a  vast  number  of  delicate  adjust 
ments  among  other  qualities  of  a  person's  na 
ture,  that  while  it  continually  invites  analy 
sis,  it  continually  eludes  definition. 

There  are  as  many  kinds  of  humor  as  there 
are  kinds  of  people,  and  the  important  ques 
tion  is,  not  whether  any  one  possesses  it,  but 
what  kind  he  possesses.  Better  none  at  all 
than  a  sort  that  does  not  chance  to  harmon 
ize  with  our  own.  George  Eliot  points  out 
somewhere  that  one  of  the  hardest  tests  of 
friendship  is  a  difference  of  taste  in  jokes. 
Why,  then,  are  people  thus  reckless  in  invok 
ing  a  quality  so  little  understood  and  so  apt 
to  lead  to  difficulties?  Every  .one  knows  that 
there  is  nothing  more  dangerous  than  an  es 
caped  virtue,  but  if  we  are  not  careful  this  one 
will  have  given  us  the  slip  and,  in  common 
phrase,  "be  all  over  the  shop."  Indeed,  it 
sometimes  seems  as  if  this  had  already  hap 
pened,  if  one  may  judge  from  our  newspapers, 
our  magazines,  our  conversation,  and  the  de 
meanor  of  our  countrymen  abroad.  Humor  is 
considered  the  one  thing  needful,  and  few 
pause  to  ask,  What  sort  of  humor?  Yet  the 


THE  HUMOR-FETISH  91 

time  may  come  when  we  shall  be  so  cloyed 
with  it  that  we  may  beg  to  be  spared  any  sort. 
Already  it  is  a  relief  now  and  then  to  find  a 
person  who  is  habitually  serious,  whose  con 
versation  is  not  continually  "lighted  up"  by 
the  humorous  point  of  view.  Such  people,  we 
hear,  are  not  good  to  live  with.  What  a  curi 
ous  blunder!  I  know  such  a  person,  one  of  the 
loveliest  I  have  ever  had  the  good  fortune  to 
meet,  and  of  humor  —  humor  of  any  sort  — 
she  has  not  a  shadow — or  shall  we  say  a 
flicker?  She  smiles  often,  but  from  pure  kind 
ness,  not  from  amusement.  She  laughs  when 
her  friends  laugh,  but  only  through  sym 
pathy  with  them.  She  has  sweet,  grave  eyes, 
and  a  mouth  gentle  and  firm  and  motherly, 
and  her  voice  is  like  the  touch  of  a  quiet  hand. 
She  has  dignity  without  condescension,  and 
a  love  for  all  things,  both  great  and  small, 
that  is  never  found  wanting.  Not  good  to 
live  with?  Those  whose  household  she  blesses 
give  thanks  every  hour  of  the  day,  though 
not  always  consciously,  for  the  boon  of  her 
presence. 

Not  get  to  Heaven  without  a  sense  of  hu 
mor?  Like  Aucassin,  we  are  puzzled.  But  we 


92  THE  HUMOR-FETISH 

will  not  be  so  defiant  as  he,  and  choose  to 
stay  out.  We  will  rather  hope  that  there  is 
some  mistake.  Perhaps  this  ruling  is  not  final. 
Perhaps  Heaven  will  reconsider. 


In  the  Matter  of  "Faith ' 

READERS  of  the  July  "Atlantic"  must  have 
found  excellent  entertainment  in  Mr.  Root's 
little  essay  on  "The  Age  of  Faith."  His  sub 
ject  is  one  that  we  are  always  interested  in  — 
the  question  of  the  real  resemblances  between 
seemingly  contrasted  periods  of  human  his 
tory.  By  a  series  of  ingenious  comparisons, 
he  leaves  us  with  the  impression  that  in  spite 
of  superficial  differences  —  of  language,  of 
manners,  of  interests  —  one  age  is  not  so  very 
different  from  another.  The  "Age  of  Reason" 
was  not  very  reasonable  after  all,  the  French 
Revolution  differed  "only  in  externals"  from 
the  Crusades  of  old,  and  the  "Ages  of  Faith," 
far  from  being  past,  find  their  counterpart  in 
the  age  to  which  we  now  belong.  It  is  very 
ingenious,  very  amusing,  and  almost  convinc 
ing. 

Almost,  but  not  quite.  Perhaps,  where  we 
have  been  so  well  amused,  we  ought  not  to 
ask  to  be  convinced.  Yet  there  is  a  serious 
aspect  to  this  question  —  so  serious  that  we 


94  IN  THE  MATTER  OF  FAITH 

cannot  bring  ourselves  to  set  it  aside.  For  the 
very  essence  of  human  history  is  here  at  issue, 
the  essence  of  human  life.  And  there  are 
some  of  us,  perhaps  many,  to  whom  Bergson 
comes  as  spokesman  for  all  our  deepest  in 
stincts  when  he  insists  that  life  is  essentially 
change,  that  for  conscious  life,  duration 
means  unfolding,  that  each  experience  in 
volves  the  total  of  preceding  experience,  and 
that  therefore  life,  bearing  along  with  it  the 
cumulative  values  of  its  own  past,  can  never, 
in  any  real  sense,  repeat  itself. 

It  is  this  that  makes  us  restive,  even  while 
we  smile  in  genuine  pleasure  at  Mr.  Root's 
cleverness.  .There  must,  we  feel,  be  some 
thing  wrong  with  his  argument. 

If  there  is,  it  lies  in  his  use  of  a  few  key 
words  —  words  like  Faith,  Evidence,  and  the 
Unseen. 

We  live,  he  says,  as  truly  in  an  age  of  faith 
as  did  our  ancestors  of  Mediaeval  Europe. 
Only,  whereas  their  faith  fastened  itself  upon 
God,  and  the  angels,  and  the  holy  relics  of  the 
saints,  ours  concerns  itself  with  other  things 
equally  unseen,  in  whose  truth  we  believe, 
just  as  the  truth  of  those  was  once  believed 


IN  THE  MATTER  OF  FAITH  95 

in,  on  the  authority  of  others,  on  the  most 
incomplete  evidence,  or  on  no  evidence  at  all. 
He  instances  our  "faith"  in  the  doctrine  of 
evolution,  in  the  revolution  of  the  earth  upon 
its  axis,  and  in  the  existence  of  specific  bac 
teria  of  disease. 

Now  it  is  true  that  the  word  "faith"  may 
be  used  to  denote  men's  belief  in  these  things, 
and  it  is  also  true  that  the  same  word  has  been 
used  to  denote  men's  belief  in  God  and  the 
angels  and  the  saints'  relics.  But  is  it  true 
that  "faith"  is  really  the  same  word  in  both 
sets  of  cases?  To  be  sure,  in  both  the  word 
implies  belief  in  something  not  immediately 
obvious  to  the  senses;  in  both  it  implies  a 
certain  confidence  in  the  authority  of  some 
one  else.  But  at  this  point  the  parallel  ends. 
Indeed,  before  this  point.  For  the  phrase 
"confidence  in  authority"  may  be  used  to 
cover  many  different  things,  and  in  this  case 
it  is  so  used.  The  confidence  that  men  once 
felt  in  the  authority  of  their  priests  is  still 
to  some  extent  paralleled  in  the  confidence 
which  we  now  feel  in  our  spiritual  leaders, 
whether  we  call  them  priests  or  not;  but  the 
confidence  which  we  feel  in  the  testimony  of 


96  IN  THE  MATTER  OF  FAITH 

men  like  Darwin  is  something  different  - 
neither  more  nor  less  valuable,  it  may  be, 
neither  more  nor  less  sure,  but  resting  on  a 
different  basis.  That  it  is  possible  to  speak  of 
both  things  under  one  name  is  merely  an  in 
stance  of  the  inaccuracy  of  language.  A  word 
is  not  a  bullet,  that  will  split  a  hair  and  leave 
the  hair  beside  it  untouched.  It  is  more  like  a 
charge  of  fine  shot,  that  hits  scatteringly  over 
the  whole  barn  door. 

Similarly,  as  he  uses  it,  the  wrord  "faith" 
covers  many  different  states  of  feeling,  which 
might  be  somewhat  more  particularly  dis 
criminated  in  the  words  certitude,  faith, 
confidence,  and  credulity.  Moreover,  these 
states  are  not  completely  different.  They  are 
not  marked  off  from  one  another  by  stiff 
fencing;  they  overlap,  they  merge  into  one 
another. 

If  then  we  agree  to  let  "faith"  stand  for  all 
these  mental  states,?  we  may  very  truly  say 
that  our  own  age,  as  well  as  other  preceding 
ones,  is  an  age  of  faith.  But  thus  understood, 
this  means  very  little.  It  goes  without  saying. 
For  the  real  question  is,  what  in  different 
ages  has  been  the  relative  importance,  or 


IN  THE  MATTER  OF  FAITH  97 

prevalence,  of  these  various  states  of  mind. 
Can  we  check  off  our  certitude  against  their 
certitude,  our  credulity  against  their  cre 
dulity,  and  so  on?  If  so,  the  two  ages  are 
so  far  really  alike.  Or  will  an  uncanceled 
residue  remain,  on  one  side  or  the  other?  If 
so,  the  two  ages  differ  in  this  respect  by  just 
so  much. 

Now,  of  course,  no  such  canceling  process 
can  be  really  applied,  though  some  rough 
appraisals  might  be  made  if  one  went  to 
work  in  the  right  way.  But  still  less  can  the 
canceling  process  be  carried  out  between  un 
like  states;  we  cannot  check  off  faith  against 
credulity,  certitude  against  confidence.  Yet 
this  is  exactly  what  Mr.  Root  does:  for  ex 
ample,  he  parallels  our  belief  in  disease- 
germs  with  the  mediaeval  belief  in  foul  fiends. 
Yet  the  belief  in  fiends  is  clearly  a  case  of 
credulity,  the  belief  in  disease-producing  bac 
teria  is,  in  spite  of  errors  and  exaggerations 
and  all  manner  of  mistakes  in  its  details, 
well  on  the  road  toward  certitude.  The  fact 
that  the  germs  are,  for  most  of  us,  unseen, 
and  the  fiends  were  also  unseen,  is  a  mere  ac 
cidental  parallelism  of  phrasing. 


98  IN  THE  MATTER  OF  FAITH 

The  logical  error  here  is  plain  enough.  Dis- 
similars  cannot  be  thus  compared.  But  per 
haps  even  similars  are  not  really  such.  Per 
haps  our  certitude  is  not  their  certitude,  our 
doubt  their  doubt. 

For  example:  it  may  be  said,  that  to  the 
mind  of  the  Middle  Ages  nothing  appeared 
impossible.  The  modern  thinker,  we  some 
times  hear  it  remarked,  is  beginning  also  to 
say,  "Nothing  is  impossible."  But  does  this 
mean  that  we  have  swung  back  to  the  earlier 
attitude?  Not  at  all.  To  assume  that  the 
tolerance  of  the  modern  thinker  for  "the  im 
possible,"  springing  from  knowledge,  —  even 
knowledge  of  his  own  vast  ignorance,  —  is 
the  same  thing  as  the  tolerance  of  the  Middle 
Ages  for  the  impossible,  springing  from  sheer 
ignorance  and  poor  method  —  to  do  this  would 
be  to  confuse  things  as  unlike  as  the  "  sleep  "  of 
a  spinning  top  and  the  stillness  of  a  dead  one. 

And  if  our  attitude  toward  the  great  realm 
of  the  uncertain  and  the  unknown  is  a  differ 
ent  thing  from  the  state  of  mind  in  former 
times,  though  it  may  be  described  in  similar 
terms,  so  also  is  our  knowledge  of  the  certain 
and  the  known  a  different  thing  from  the 


IN  THE  MATTER  OF  FAITH  99 

knowledge  of  earlier  men.  The  thirteenth- 
century  man  felt  certain,  because  of  the  evi 
dence  of  his  senses,  that  the  sun  revolved 
round  the  earth.  We  feel  certain,  in  spite  of 
this  evidence  of  the  senses,  but  on  account  of 
other  evidence,  also  coming  to  us  ultimately 
through  the  senses,  that  the  earth  moves 
round  the  sun.  But  no  one  will  seriously  main 
tain  that  our  certitude  and  his  certitude  are 
the  same  in  quality.  There  have  been,  par 
ticularly  since  Bacon's  time,  changes  in  the 
manner  of  our  thinking,  both  in  basis  and 
method,  which  are  gradually  changing  the 
quality  of  belief  of  every  kind.  The  attitude 
of  mind  which  made  it  possible  for  really  good 
thinkers  to  say,  "I  doubt,  therefore  I  believe," 
is  obsolescent,  if  not  obsolete.  And  if  faith 
is,  perhaps,  changing,  religion  is  certainly 
changing  still  more.  If  there  really  is,  as  Mr. 
Root  suggests,  a  "religion  of  evolution,"  — 
and  the  phrase  seems  a  very  doubtful  one,  — 
this  means,  not  that  religion  is  still  the  same 
only  with  its  lingo  altered,  but  that  men  are 
making  for  themselves  a  new  religion  to  meet 
their  new  needs.  Whether  it  does  or  does  not 
meet  these  needs  is  beside  the  question. 


100         IN  THE  MATTER  OF  FAITH 

As  usual,  it  comes  down  to  a  question  of 
the  meaning  of  terms.  All  through  Mr. 
Root's  article  he  seems  to  be  indulging  in  a 
kind  of  tournament  of  language,  in  which 
the  game  is  to  see  how  many  different  ideas 
you  can  spear  with  the  same  word.  The 
word  "unseen"  is  a  wonder  in  this  sort  of  con 
test.  Bacteria  are  unseen,  angels  are  unseen, 
demons  are  unseen,  phagocytes  are  unseen, 
the  ice  age  is  unseen,  God  is  unseen.  There 
fore  they  are  all  of  a  piece,  —  bacteria,  angels, 
demons,  phagocytes,  the  ice  age  and  God,  — 
spitted  on  the  same  lance  and  brandished  be 
fore  our  somewhat  astonished  eyes. 

And  his  best  lance  of  all  is  Faith.  Thrusting 
to  right  and  left,  he  impales  upon  its  shaft  all 
manner  of  things  —  faith  in  scientists,  faith 
in  God,  faith  in  doctors  and  health  officers, 
faith  in  witches,  faith  in  priests  and  in  astrol 
ogers  and  medicine-men,  faith  in  astronomi 
cal  laws. 

Success  to  such  tilting!  It  is  fun  to  watch, 
and  does  no  harm  so  long  as  we  remember 
that  it  is  only  a  game.  But  suppose  we  forgot 
this,  suppose  we  began  to  think  that  these 
strange  spear-mates  of  the  tilting  were  really 


IN  THE  MATTEL  QF  FAmi          101 

mates?  That  would,  perhaps,  be  something 
of  a  pity,  because  it  would  mean  the  throwing 
away  of  such  precision  of  thinking  as  we  have 
yet  attained,  which  is  little  enough. 

It  is  just  this  lack  of  precise  thinking, 
—  this  habit  of  comfortable  believing  that 
things  on  the  whole  are  pretty  much  as  they 
have  always  been,  and  will  continue  pretty 
much  the  same  forever,  —  that  is  at  the  root 
of  a  good  many  of  our  troubles.  It  is,  for  ex 
ample,  what  helps  some  of  us  to  believe  that 
there  is  no  church  problem,  and  no  marriage 
problem,  —  that  in  these  realms  no  real 
changes  have  occurred,  and  therefore  no  new 
adjustments  are  required. 

This  is  the  only  excuse  for  any  protest 
against  so  delightful  a  bit  of  entertainment 
as  is  furnished  us  in  the  little  article  in  ques 
tion.  Perhaps,  however,  we  have  a  private 
and  particular  grievance,  in  the  fact  that  the 
treatment  of  "faith"  seems  to  spoil  the  word 
for  us.  We  have  always  thought  of  it  as  "the 
substance  of  things  hoped  for,  the  evidence  of 
things  not  seen."  And  it  has  often  appeared 
to  us  that  "faith"  in  this  sense  is  growing 
stronger  and  keener  because  more  fully  aware 


10*         IN  THE  MATTER  OF  FAITH 

of  its  own  realm  and  its  own  power.  We 
know,  as  never  before,  the  difference  between 
the  things  hoped  for  and  the  things  possessed. 
We  know,  as  never  before,  the  difference  be 
tween  the  things  that  are  seen  —  whether 
with  the  mind's  eye  or  the  body's  is  imma 
terial  —  and  the  things  that  are  not  seen. 
For  this  reason,  and  not  at  all  for  those  given 
by  Mr.  Root,  we  might  be  willing  to  call  our 
own  age  an  age  of  faith.  But  if  faith  must  be 
allowed  to  mean  belief  in  bacteria  and  in 
gravity  and  in  evolution  —  very  well.  We 
must  give  up  the  word  to  these  uses  and  find 
another  to  mean  what  we  have  thus  far 
meant  by  faith  —  faith  in  the  power  of  love, 
faith  in  all  the  things  of  the  spirit. 

And  yet  —  St.  Paul's  English  translators 
have  held  the  field  a  long  time.  Would  it  not 
be  courteous  to  let  them  keep  their  word,  and 
find  another  for  bacteria  and  phagocytes? 


"In  Their  Season91 

THERE  is  a  scene  in  Marlowe's  "Doctor 
Faustus"  in  which  the  great  doctor,  wishing 
to  show  his  power,  asks  a  duchess  what 
dainty  she  most  desires.  It  being  then  mid 
winter,  she  considerately  chooses  "a  dish  of 
ripe  grapes."  Nothing  daunted,  Faustus  pro 
duces  the  grapes,  and  the  duke  exclaims,"  Be 
lieve  me,  Master  Doctor,  this  makes  me  to 
wonder  above  the  rest,  that  being  in  the  dead 
time  of  winter,  and  in  the  month  of  January, 
how  you  should  come  by  these  grapes,"  while 
the  delighted  duchess  chimes  in,  "Believe 
me,  Master  Doctor,  they  be  the  best  grapes 
that  e'er  I  tasted  in  my  life  before." 

The  passage  often  comes  to  my  mind  as  I 
glance  at  the  show  windows  of  some  "high- 
class"  grocery,  and  realize  that  if  the  play 
were  rewritten  strictly  up  to  date  Faustus 
would  have  to  produce  something  much  more 
spectacular  than  grapes  in  January  in  order 
to  rouse  even  a  passing  comment. 

I  wish  it  were  not  so.  Not  that  I  begrudge 


104  IN  THEIR  SEASON 

the  duchess  her  grapes,  or  Faustus  his  chance 
to  show  off.  They  meant  no  harm.  But 
against  the  tendency  that  they  represent  I 
protest.  "That  they  should  bring  forth  their 
fruits  in  due  season."  This  embodies  an  older 
idea,  and  to  my  mind  a  better  one.  I  am  not 
prepared  to  defend  everything  in  the  original 
plan  of  the  world  —  many  things  have  been 
and  many  things  can  be  improved.  But  this 
part  of  the  arrangement  always  seemed  to 
me,  in  its  main  outlines,  very  good. 

"In  their  season."  That,  to  my  mind, 
means  strawberries  in  June  and  blueberries 
in  July  and  huckleberries  in  August.  And 
when  I  encounter  strawberries  in  January, 
blueberries  in  March,  and  raspberries  in  De 
cember  I  feel  deeply  irritated.  I  do  not  want 
all  my  seasons  jogging  my  elbow  at  once. 
It  makes  me  think  of  a  certain  sort  of  board 
ing-house  table,  under  "liberal"  manage 
ment,  where  every  day  one  is  given  six  differ 
ent  vegetables,  and  mostly  the  same  six.  Far 
better  one  each  day  for; six  days,  and  a  chance 
between  to  forget  it. 

I  like  my  spring  mud  in  March,  my  roses 
in  June,  my  apples  in  September,  my  sleet 


IN  THEIR  SEASON  105 

and  snow  in  January — all  things  in  their  own 
place.  The  time  for  winter  seems  to  me  to 
be  the  winter-time,  and  spring-time,  I  am 
profoundly  convinced,  is  the  time  for  spring. 
For  one  of  the  most  joyous  things  about 
spring  is  that  it  comes  after  winter.  Cayenne 
on  the  tongue,  it  is  said,  gives  zest  to  cham 
pagne.  Reversing  the  temperatures,  winter 
gives  zest  to  spring.  What  can  it  mean,  I 
wonder,  to  countries  who  do  not  have  to 
tussle  through  a  New  England  winter?  And, 
conversely,  should  we  enjoy  the  coziness  and 
intimacy  of  winter  if  we  had  not  had  the  great, 
wide  summer  to  play  in  first? 

Children  understand  these  matters.  Look 
how  they  take  their  sports!  When  the  winds 
of  March  bluster  round  our  house-corners,  it 
is  the  time  for  kites  —  kites  they  must  have. 
The  cloud-swept  skies  are  full  of  them  — 
green  diamond  kites,  red  and  yellow  Japan 
ese  kites,  big  modern  box  kites,  old-fashioned 
brown  paper  kites  with  long  waggling  tails, 
sensitively  responsive  to  every  stimulus.  For 
a  brief  season  they  live  overhead,  riding  still 
and  calm,  or  performing  wild  antics,  accord 
ing  to  the  wind  or  their  own  inherent  nature. 


106  IN  THEIR  SEASON 

Then  their  time  is  past,  leaving  its  traces  only 
in  the  sorry  remnants  that  nest  in  the  tree- 
tops  or  dangle  forlornly  from  the  telegraph 
wires.  And  after  them  comes  marbles  —  or 
is  it  jack-stones?  and  then  tops,  and  then 
roller-skates,  and  then  —  ?  but  this  is  no 
child's  almanac;  I  may  have  the  series  all 
wrong,  but  I  have  digested  the  principle,  and 
I  should  never  expect  to  find  a  well-regulated 
child  using  jack-stones  in  the  top  season,  or 
spinning  tops  in  kite  time. 

It  is  not  so  with  us  older  people.  And  I 
have  been  as  bad  as  any.  There  was  a  time 
when  I  thought  it  a  rather  clever  thing  to 
take  spring  by  violence.  I  brought  out  pussy 
willows  in  December  —  it  is  a  common  enough 
offense.  And  when  they  had  gone  through 
all  their  stages,  from  silver  kitten-paws  to 
pink  kitten-noses,  then  to  fluffy  yellow  or 
green  caterpillars,  and  finally  had  shed  all 
these  and  sent  out  long  pale  shoots  and 
masses  of  white  roots,  I  was  embarrassed 
to  know  what  to  do  with  them.  I  could 
not  throw  live  green  things  like  that  out  in 
January  snowdrifts.  I  could  not  plant  them, 
I  did  not  want  to  keep  them  in  a  jar  until 


IN  THEIR  SEASON  107 

April.  Finally  I  threw  them  in  the  fire  and 
left  the  room  quickly. 

I  tried  again  with  dogwood.  I  picked  it  in 
January,  and  by  the  end  of  February  it  was 
in  blossom.  It  was  beautiful,  of  course,  and 
I  was  rather  proud  — I  don't  know  whether 
my  enjoyment  of  the  results  came  more  from 
love  of  beauty  or  from  pride.  But  after  the 
blossoms  had  shriveled,  there  were  still 
March  and  April.  Whenever  I  passed  a  dog 
wood  tree,  I  felt,  somehow,  uncomfortable.  I 
had  had  my  dogwood.  These  little  dabs  at 
spring  simply  took  the  edge  off,  like  a  nap 
just  before  bedtime. 

This,  I  fancy,  is  almost  always  true.  There 
is  no  greater  pleasure  than  that  of  watching 
the  seasons  —  any  season,  whether  of  vege 
tables  or  of  people  —  observe  their  own  times 
and  develop  their  own  qualities.  Moreover, 
in  the  opposite  habit,  the  habit  that  Faustus 
exemplified  and  most  of  our  modern  institu 
tions  encourage,  there  lurks  a  real  danger.  It 
is  the  danger  that  things  will  be  valued,  not 
in  proportion  to  their  real  goodness  or  charm, 
but  in  proportion  to  the  difficulty  of  obtain 
ing  them.  Faustus's  grapes  had  a  certain 


108  IN  THEIR  SEASON 

natural  value  as  grapes,  but  they  had  also  an 
artificial  value  as  grapes  in  January.  In  his 
case  this  meant,  the  Devil.  In  our  more  mod 
ern  situation,  it  means  a  hothouse  or  a  cold- 
storage  plant,  and  the  establishment  that 
goes  with  it;  or  it  means  the  equivalent  of  this 
in  money  —  which  we  may  or  may  not  call 
the  Devil,  according  to  the  way  we  happen  to 
look  at  such  matters. 

Faustus  was  proud  of  his  Devil,  and  we  are 
proud  of  our  hothouses  or  their  equivalent, 
and  in  the  meantime  the  goodness  of  grapes 
as  grapes  is  apt  to  become  a  secondary  matter 
—  not,  perhaps,  to  the  duchess,  who  merely 
ate  the  grapes,  but  to  Faustus.  He  was  not 
above  showing  off,  neither  was  the  Devil, 
neither  are  any  of  us,  though  we  are  usually 
above  seeming  to  show  off,  having  lost  the 
naivete  of  the  old  doctor  and  his  Mephisto; 
and  this  desire  blurs  our  appreciation  of 
grapes  as  grapes,  and  of  other  things.  It  may, 
indeed,  carry  us  so  far  that  we  shall  find 
ourselves  cherishing  and  exhibiting  ugliness, 
because  it  is  hard  to  get,  and  growing  in 
different  to  any  beauty  that  is  not  rare. 

It  is  not  only  the  fruits  and  vegetables  that 


IN  THEIR  SEASON  109 

are  getting  mixed  up.  The  seasons  in  people's 
lives  seem  to  be  losing  some  of  their  individ 
ual  character,  so  that  we  never  know  just 
what  we  are  going  to  get.  In  some  ways  this 
is  a  gain.  For  example,  the  definite  putting 
away  of  childish  things  was  not  an  un 
alloyed  good.  The  complete  shutting-off  of 
the  child  from  the  confidence  of  the  adult,  the 
complete  alienation  of  the  adult  from  the  in 
terests  of  the  youth,  these  are  not  habits  to 
cling  to.  And  yet  it  is  a  fact  that  life  ought  to 
bring  us  its  various  experiences  with  a  certain 
regard  to  their  seasonableness,  and  when  we 
see  little  children  going  to  "problem-plays," 
and  grown-ups  spending  their  mornings  over 
cards  and  their  evenings  over  picture-puzzles, 
one  is  tempted  to  think  that  something  is 
wrong.  Jaques  would  have  to  revise  his  sum 
mary  of  the  seven  ages  of  man,  and  still  more 
of  woman,  rather  thoroughly  to  make  it  pass 
muster  now.  There  seems  to  be  very  little 
springtime  in  the  lives  of  to-day;  it  is  mostly 
summer  and  Indian  summer,  while  winter  — 
quiet,  hospitable,  intimate,  stay-at-home  win 
ter  —  is  getting  left  out  entirely. 

If  we  don't  look  out,  we  shall  infect  Nature. 


110  IN  THEIR  SEASON 

She  is  a  sensitive  creature,  highly  "suggest 
ible,"  as  the  psychologists  put  it.  Some  one 
has  maintained  that  it  was  purely  at  the  sug 
gestion  of  the  impressionists  that  she  perpe 
trated  London  fogs  and  purple  cabbages.  She 
may  do  other  things.  There  is  no  telling  what 
she  may  not  do.  In  imagination  I  look  out 
upon  a  world  where  babes  in  tailor-made  suits 
play  bridge  through  snow-bound  July  eve 
nings,  where  old  ladies  in  pinafores  skip  about 
picking  daisies  in  December.  But  let  us  not 
too  wildly  anticipate!  Let  us  bring  ourselves 
up  sharply  before  it  is  too  late.  Let  us  con 
sider  whether  we  do  not,  after  all,  get  the 
most  out  of  things,  whether  they  be  grapes  or 
kites  or  snowstorms  or  enthusiasm,  by  taking 
them  in  their  season. 


Manners  and  the  Puritan 

MR.  ELL  WOOD  HENDRICK'S  article,  "We  Are 
so  Young,"  which  appeared  in  the  May 
"Atlantic,"  will  bring  satisfaction  and  re 
freshment  to  many  of  us,  who  have  long  felt 
as  he  does  on  the  subject  of  American  man 
ners. 

The  question,  as  he  raises  it,  is  not  whether 
American  manners  are  bad,  but  whether,  if 
they  are  bad,  we  can  allow  the  "older"  na 
tions  to  excuse  us  on  the  ground  of  our 
"youth." 

Many  of  us  must  agree  heartily  with  Mr. 
Hendrick  in  his  protest  against  the  accept 
ance  of  this  excuse.  We  may  go  even  further, 
and  maintain  that  we  cannot  afford  to  claim 
or  accept  exemption  from  world-standards  of 
manners  on  any  ground  whatever.  If,  how 
ever,  we  are  seeking,  not  excuses  but  reasons, 
I  am  inclined  to  think  that,  at  least  as  far  as 
New  England,  and  those  sections  of  the  coun 
try  which  derive  from  New  England,  are  con 
cerned,  we  have  paid  too  little  attention  to 


MANNERS  AND  THE  PURITAN 

the  possible  effect  on  manners  of  a  Puritan 
tradition. 

The  Puritan  conscience  and  other  things 
about  the  Puritans  have,  perhaps,  been  a 
little  overemphasized,  but  it  is,  I  hope,  not 
altogether  fanciful  to  suggest  that  the  habits 
of  mind  which  fostered  the  Puritan  reaction 
and  which  were  in  turn  fostered  by  it,  are  not 
of  a  sort  which  would  blossom  and  bear  fruit 
in  comeliness  of  manner  and  of  phrase. 

For  this  was  a  reaction  from  what?  From 
what  seemed  to  them  empty  ritualism,  with 
its  attendant  evils  of  worldliness,  vanity,  sub 
servience,  easy-going  acceptance  of  authority, 
shirking  of  individual  responsibility.  These 
things  were  embodied  in  the  court  and  the 
cavalier,  in  the  papacy  and  hardly  less  in  the 
episcopacy.  They  wore,  it  was  admitted,  a 
pleasing  shape,  but  the  heart  of  them  was 
rotten. 

But  reactions  always  swing  too  far,  and 
the  Puritans  proved  no  exception  to  the  rule. 
In  casting  off  worldliness,  they  cast  off,  also, 
some  of  the  courtesies  of  life.  In  condemn 
ing  subservience  and  easy-going,  they  con 
demned  also  deference  and  tolerance.  In  put- 


MANNERS  AND  THE  PURITAN       113 

ting  aside  vanity  and  untruth,  they  gave  up 
a  certain  daintiness  and  comeliness  in  the  or 
dering  of  life.  Not  necessarily  all  at  once,  and 
certainly  not  with  any  intention.  It  is  con 
ceivable  that  the  effect  of  this  attitude  might 
not  be  apparent  at  first.  I  do  not  know  what 
were  the  manners  of  my  ancestors;  they  may 
have  been  as  finished  as  any  courtier's;  but  I 
know  the  manners  of  some  of  their  descend 
ants,  and  I  am  sure  no  court  would  find 
them  appropriate. 

The  old  world,  and  the  older  religion, 
stood  for  the  efficacy  of  ritual.  "Never 
mind  about  thinking,"  it  said  in  effect,  "there 
are  those  who  will  do  that  for  you,  in  govern 
ment,  in  learning,  in  religion.  All  you  need  to 
do  is  to  perform  the  rites  as  they  are  laid 
down  for  you.  This  way  lies  salvation." 

The  Puritan  responded,  "This  way  lurks 
damnation.  Ritual  is  nothing;  nay,  it  is 
worse  than  nothing  if  it  comes  between  you 
and  the  truth.  See  to  it  first  of  all  that  your 
heart  is  right.  Examine  yourself  sternly  and 
cast  out  hypocrisy.  All  else  matters  little.  No 
authority  can  do  a  man's  thinking  for  him. 
Each  for  himself,  men  must  face  God.  Ob- 


114      MANNERS  AND  THE  PURITAN 

servances,  ceremonies,  are  Popish  abomina 
tions.  What  does  it  matter  if  the  outer  man 
be  altogether  pleasing,  so  long  as  the  soul  of 
him  is  damned?" 

Now,  whatever  might  be  the  first  effect  of 
such  an  attitude,  the  ultimate  effect  could 
hardly  help  being  a  minimizing  of  the  impor 
tance  of  all  the  externals  of  life.  The  theory 
might  actually  justify  a  good  deal  of  this,  and 
practice  might  tend  to  go  even  further  than 
theory.  For  when  once  you  have  said  that  if 
the  heart  is  right  externals  are  unimportant, 
it  is  easy,  by  a  confusion  of  thought  very 
common,  to  assume  that  externals  are  not 
merely  subordinate  to  the  things  of  the  heart, 
but  are  actually  at  war  with  them.  The 
phrases  "empty  form,"  "hollow  sham," 
"rough  honesty,"  "rugged  virtue,"  indicate 
a  tendency  to  regard  the  inner  and  the  outer 
virtues  as  antagonistic.  Has  a  man  pleasing 
manners  and  courteous  address?  His  heart 
may  nevertheless  be  black.  This  does  not,  in 
deed,  warrant  us  in  assuming  that  because  he 
has  pleasing  manners  his  heart  is  therefore 
black,  yet  the  passage  from  one  conviction  to 
the  other  is  curiously  easy. 


MANNERS  AND  THE  PURITAN       115 

The  quality  that  New  Englanders  worship 
is  sincerity,  but  they  can  with  difficulty  con 
ceive  a  sincerity  that  is  not  also  a  little  rough 
and  blunt.  Polish  rouses  their  suspicion. 
They  can  appraise  a  rough  diamond  more 
easily  than  a  finished  one.  I  suppose  we  all 
know  the  New  England  mother  who  says, 
"Manners  are  all  very  well,  but  what  I  care 
about  in  my  children  is  their  morals.  I  would 
rather  have  my  children  truthful  and  good 
than  have  them  learn  to  bow  gracefully  and 
say,  'Pardon  me." 

If  one  suggests  in  answer  that  these  things 
are  not  mutually  exclusive,  that  not  all  rude 
children  are  truthful  nor  all  well-mannered 
ones  hypocrites,  she  looks  at  one  a  little 
askance.  She  is  of  those  who  traditionally  and 
sincerely  believe  that  the  French  are  vicious 
in  proportion  as  they  are  polite,  since  honesty 
must  of  necessity  be  "rugged." 

Such  people  have  no  sympathy  with  the 
theory  that  the  way  you  behave  reacts  upon 
the  way  you  feel.  They  will,  perhaps,  admit 
that  if  you  do  a  definite  service  for  some  one, 
you  are  more  apt  to  feel  kindly  toward  him, 
but  it  has  never  occurred  to  them  to  go 


116       MANNERS  AND  THE  PURITAN 

further  and  admit  that  if  you  behave  courte 
ously,  it  makes  you  feel  more  courteous  inside; 
that  if  you  go  to  meet  a  person  as  if  you  were 
glad  to  see  him,  it  makes  you  actually  feel 
more  glad;  that  if  you  kneel,  it  may  make  you 
actually  feel  more  reverent.  If  it  did  occur  to 
them,  they  would  repudiate  it  as  sanctioning 
hypocrisy.  Why  it  should  be  more  hypocriti 
cal  to  speak  pleasantly  and  with  deference  to 
people  whom  you  do  not  care  for  than  it  is 
to  give  soup  or  coal  to  other  people  whom 
you  do  not  care  for,  they  could  not,  perhaps, 
fully  explain. 

Perhaps  this  attitude  is  not  quite  as  un 
reasonable  and  unlovely  as  I  am  making  it 
appear.  I  am  stating  it  a  little  perversely,  to 
make  my  point  clearer.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
New  England  is  not  alone  in  admiring  blunt 
honesty  and  rugged  virtue,  and  in  distrusting 
a  smooth  exterior.  It  was  not  a  Puritan  who 
said  that  a  man  might  smile  and  smile  and  be 
a  villain.  Yet,  when  New  Englanders  quote 
this,  they  forget  that  the  particular  villain 
in  question  was  the  only  smiling  one  the 
master  created.  Did  he  realize,  instinctively, 
perhaps,  that  to  smile  and  smile  and  still 


MANNERS  AND  THE  PURITAN      117 

be  a  villain  a  man  must  be  an  arch- villain 
indeed? 

At  all  events,  these  traditions  have  found 
in  New  England  a  soil  of  peculiar  richness, 
and  they  have  flourished  exceptionally  well. 
Without  any  explicit  assertion  that  to  bow 
is  vice  and  to  smile  is  villainy,  there  has  often 
seemed  to  be  an  instinctive  feeling  that  the 
truly  honest  and  high-minded  will  not  stoop 
to  garnish  their  lives  with  such  trumpery 
trimmings. 

Now  it  should  of  course  be  remembered 
that  people's  principles  never  have  quite  the 
influence  that  we  might  expect  them  to  have. 
Human  nature  is  an  imperfectly  unified  con 
glomerate,  shot  through  here  and  there  by  a 
ray  of  principle  —  if  one  may  use  the  word 
"ray"  of  that  which  seems  so  often  to  darken 
rather  than  illumine.  Principles  are  nothing 
in  themselves.  They  have  to  be  held  by  par 
ticular  persons,  and  they  are  held  in  all  sorts 
of  ways.  Some  carry  their  principles  as  cer 
tain  folk  do  horse-chestnuts,  —  in  their  pock 
ets,  as  a  specific  against  disease,  —  and  then 
go  along  much  as  if  they  were  not  there. 
Others  wear  them  like  a  garment;  but  there 


118      MANNERS  AND  THE  PURITAN 

were,  proverbially,  many  ways  of  wearing 
the  toga.  Others  again  give  their  principles  a 
more  intimate  reception.  But  in  such  inti 
macy  the  influences  are  reciprocal:  often,  by 
the  time  a  principle  has  penetrated  through 
a  temperament  it  would  not  know  its  own 
countenance. 

So  with  the  New  Englander.  It  is  not  in 
every  individual  that  the  New  England  tradi 
tion  has  had  its  perfect  work.  I  know  many 
in  whom  it  has  not.  I  know  some  in  whom  it 
has  —  people  of  unflinching  honesty,  of  clear 
integrity,  of  real  benevolence,  whose  manners 
are  distinctly  grim,  and  whose  feelings  of 
affection  and  devotion,  deep  and  strong  as 
they  are,  find  no  habitual  expression  in  ways 
of  pleasantness.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is 
in  New  England  a  body  of  people,  equally  be 
longing  to  it,  who  have  not  shared  this  dis 
tinctively  Puritan  tradition. 

In  almost  every  New  England  town,  while 
there  are  many  Noncomformist  churches,  — 
Presbyterian  and  Congregational  and  Baptist 
and  Methodist,  —  there  is  usually  also  one 
Episcopal  church.  It  is  often  the  littlest  one, 
it  is  almost  always  the  prettiest.  The  others 


MANNERS  AND  THE  PURITAN       119 

are  stern  and  uncompromising  —  four  walls 
and  a  roof,  windows  and  a  door,  and  perhaps 
a  steeple  for  the  bell.  The  best  of  them  have, 
in  their  own  way,  a  very  real  distinction.  But 
the  little  Episcopal  church  has  something 
different.  Shall  we  venture  to  call  it  charm? 
It  nestles  beside  the  village  street  with  a  cozy 
air,  it  encourages  vines  to  grow  over  it.  It  is 
pleasant  and  propitiatory  and  adaptable  in 
every  line.  And  within,  the  congregation  and 
those  who  lead  in  the  service,  have  usually 
something  of  this  same  quality.  Voices  are  a 
little  less  strident,  manners  are  a  little  more 
gracious,  than  in  the  other  churches. 

I  knew  a  young  man  who  claimed  that  he 
could  tell  an  Episcopalian  by  her  hats.  This, 
I  think,  is  going  too  far.  I  should  dislike  to 
predicate  of  any  denomination  the  eccentrici 
ties  patent  in  most  women's  hats.  But,  taken 
in  moderation,  there  is  something  in  it.  Of 
course,  there  are  exceptions:  not  all  Episco 
palians  have  pleasant  voices,  nor  all  Presby 
terians  nasal  ones.  Especially  in  the  cities, 
where  the  church  influence  is  but  a  tiny  strand 
among  a  multitude  woven  into  each  life,  all 
such  differences  tend  to  disappear.  And  even 


120       MANNERS  AND  THE  PURITAN 

in  villages,  I  have  seen  Episcopal  churches  as 
ugly  as  the  worst  of  the  Nonconformist,  and 
I  have  seen  Presbyterian  churches  that  were 
—  well,  they  were  by  strangers  persistently 
mistaken  for  the  Episcopal. 

Yet  it  seems  to  me  not  unnatural  that  this 
difference,  typically,  should  exist.  For  the 
Nonconformists  deliberately  broke  with  a  tra 
dition  that  had  its  own  ripe  beauty.  They 
distrusted  charm.  They  saw  an  antagonism 
between  beauty  and  truth.  They  avoided  the 
ways  of  pleasantness.  They  felt  that  con 
ventions  and  convictions  could  not  dwell  to 
gether.  In  all  this  there  was  gain  and  there 
was  loss.  And  when,  as  all  rebels  against  con 
vention  inevitably  do,  they  erected  their  own 
conventions,  these  were  relatively  stern  and 
barren,  and  a  little  ungracious. 

All  this  while  I  have  spoken  of  New 
England,  which  is  a  small  part  of  the  United 
States.  But  the  West,  so  far  as  it  is  not  for 
eign,  was  settled  from  New  England  or  from 
the  South,  and  its  pioneer  past  is  nearer  by 
many  generations  than  our  own,  so  that  other 
elements  enter  into  the  question  of  manners. 
The  South,  again,  is  preponderantly  Episco- 


MANNERS  AND  THE  PURITAN 

pal  —  at  least  the  South  that  we  usually 
think  of.  And  this  South  has,  so  far  as  I  know, 
not  had  its  manners  often  called  in  ques 
tion.  Whether  this  is  a  mere  coincidence,  or 
whether  its  Episcopacy  has  really  been  a  con 
tributing  cause,  I  cannot  say. 

In  any  case,  this  is  not  a  defense  of  Episco 
pacy  nor  an  arraignment  of  Nonconformity. 
It  is  a  study  of  possible  tendencies  involved 
in  two  rather  different  attitudes  toward  life. 
Each  is  beset  by  dangers,  each  achieves  its 
characteristic  victories.  The  sins  of  Non 
conformity  are  the  sins  of  presumption  and 
intolerance,  the  sins  of  ritualism  are  the  sins 
of  formalism  and  indifference  and  superfi 
ciality.  The  virtues  of  the  one  are  those  of 
independence  and  honesty  and  devotion;  the 
virtues  of  the  other  are  those  of  tolerance  and 
deference  and  kindness.  It  is,  to  some  extent, 
the  individual  virtues  contrasted  with  the 
social  virtues. 

But  all  of  these  are  good,  all  are  necessary 
to  society,  and  the  pity  is  that  they  have  not 
always  been  able  to  live  together  companion- 
ably;  that  one  set  should  drive  out  the  other. 
Perhaps  it  does  no  harm  to  remind  ourselves 


122      MANNERS  AND  THE  PURITAN 

that  these  two  attitudes  are  not  the  only 
possible  ones.  As  interpretations  of  life,  Non 
conformity  and  Episcopacy  can  learn  from 
each  other,  and  the  outcome  may  conceivably 
be  something  better  than  either. 


A  Matter  of  Planes 

"MY  sister  and  I  get  along  beautifully  to 
gether:  she  cares  only  about  the  big  things  of 
life,  and  I  care  only  about  the  little  ones." 
This  remark,  made  to  me  once  by  a  friend 
of  mine,  comes  into  my  mind  every  now  and 
then,  and  I  am  increasingly  amused  by  its 
astuteness.  For  nothing  seems  more  capri 
cious  than  the  basis  of  our  harmonious  inter 
course  one  with  another.  We  constantly  see 
people  whom  we  would  aver  to  be  incompati 
ble,  living  serenely  at  peace,  while  others, 
whose  cordial  agreement  we  would  as  con 
fidently  predict,  are  quarreling  scandalously. 
I  believe  my  friend's  remark  may  throw  some 
light  on  the  matter.  It  amounts  to  this: 
people  on  the  same  plane  may  clash,  people 
on  different  ones  cannot.  It  is  the  grade- 
crossings  that  make  trouble. 

Let  us  see  how  it  works.  Here  are  Bene 
dick  and  I  living  happily  together,  although 
our  acquaintances  would  "never  have  ex 
pected  it."  We  are  both  of  us  possessed  of 


134  A  MATTER  OF  PLANES 

strong  convictions,  but  they  happen  not  to 
concern  the  same  things.  For  example,  I  put 
sugar  in  my  coffee.  I  think  that  is  the  way  to 
take  coffee,  and  of  course  I  always  put  it  in 
Benedick's  cup  too.  Now  Benedick  does  n't 
care,  —  he  would  scarcely  notice  if  I  dropped 
an  onion  in,  because  he  is  thinking  about 
civil-service  reform  and  other  large  matters. 
As  he  drinks  his  coffee  he  talks  to  me  of  these 
things,  which  I  regard  as  unquestionably  of 
vital  importance,  but  unquestionably  not  of 
vital  interest.  Yet  Benedick  talks  well,  and  it 
is  very  becoming  to  him  to  be  deeply  in  earn 
est,  and  so  I  like  to  listen  to  him.  Thus  we 
get  along  together  very  happily.  He  accepts 
my  little  habits,  and  I  accept  his  big  princi 
ples.  The  adjustment  is  perfect. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  is  a  certain  lady 
who  sometimes  visits  us.  She  drinks  her 
coffee  without  sugar,  and  she  never  sits  at 
breakfast  with  us  that  she  does  not  evince 
real  uneasiness  as  she  watches  the  white 
cubes  being  dropped  into  our  steaming  cups. 
Benedick  has  never  even  noticed  that  she  is 
uneasy,  but  I  have,  because, — well,  because 
I  am  living  on  her  plane;  for  I  myself  am  al- 


A  MATTER  OF  PLANES  125 

ways  conscious  of  a  distinct  feeling  of  annoy 
ance  when  I  see  any  one  put  sugar  on  lettuce. 
Nor  is  this  the  only  ground  of  discord  between 
us.  She  has  the  habit  of  rising  at  half-past 
six  every  morning,  and  taking  a  cold  bath 
before  breakfast.  She  is  never  late.  I  often 
am,  and  I  loathe  cold  baths,  except  in  the 
ocean.  Accordingly,  when  I  come  down,  I 
find  her  awaiting  me,  covered  with  meritori- 
ousness  as  with  a  garment,  and  I  feel  myself 
her  inferior,  a  feeling  which  I  resent  but  can 
not  escape.  I  find  no  refuge  in  philosophy, 
for  I  have  no  more  philosophy  than  she  has. 
No,  we  are  on  the  same  plane,  and  we  are 
always  colliding. 

On  the  other  hand,  Benedick  likes  her  very 
well,  but  for  his  part  cannot  get  through  a 
meal  comfortably  with  his  uncle,  because 
they  disagree  about  trusts  and  the  tariff.  Yet 
his  uncle  and  I  always  enjoy  each  other's 
society.  He  takes  three  lumps  of  sugar  in 
his  coffee  and  none  at  all  on  his  lettuce;  he 
regularly  oversleeps  the  breakfast  hour  and 
apologizes  handsomely  for  it  afterwards.  He 
has,  in  fact,  what  I  consider  a  comfortable  set 
of  habits,  and  his  theories  do  not  disturb  me. 


126  A  MATTEE  OF  PLANES 

Personally,  I  find  it  pleasant  to  live  with 
people  who  will  let  me  arrange  the  unimpor 
tant  features  of  life,  while  I  am  quite  ready  to 
let  them  settle  what  one  of  my  teachers  used  to 
call  its  "cosmic  principles."  I  can  understand 
one's  enduring  martyrdom  for  the  sake  of  de 
tails  of  taste,  but  not  for  such  large  matters 
as  Truth  or  the  Hereafter,  which  seem  to  me 
abundantly  able  to  take  care  of  themselves. 

I  wonder  if  this  explains  why  men  are  less 
apt  to  quarrel  with  women  than  with  other 
men,  and  women  less  apt  to  quarrel  with  men 
than  with  other  women.  For  the  lives  of  men 
and  women  are  doubtless  on  quite  different 
planes;  they  are  not  apt  to  feel  strongly  about 
the  same  things,  and  thus  each  is  indulgent 
toward  the  other's  convictions,  not  being 
deeply  touched  by  them.  Have  you  ever 
noticed  at  a  dinner-party,  when  one  of  the 
men  is  telling  a  good  story,  the  difference  be 
tween  the  attitudes  of  the  other  men  and  of 
the  women?  The  women  —  except  perhaps 
the  wife  of  the  speaker  —  listen  easily,  re 
ceptively;  the  men  listen  restlessly,  each  alert 
for  a  chance  to  follow  up  the  tale  with  one  of 
his  own.  For  it  is  perfectly  well  understood 


A  MATTER  OF  PLANES  127 

that  women  are  not  required  to  tell  good 
stories  at  dinner,  and  so  a  woman  can  enjoy 
them  all  irresponsibly,  while  a  man  feels  in 
each  one  something  very  like  a  challenge. 

On  the  other  hand,  when  either  sex  invades 
the  other's  sphere,  there  is  apt  to  be  trouble. 
We  all  know  how  a  woman,  the  ordinary, 
normal  woman,  feels  when  the  man  attempts 
to  "interfere"  in  the  household;  and  a  man, 
the  ordinary,  normal  man,  has  a  similar  ob 
jection  to  women's  invading  his  province.  In 
Germany,  at  a  university  function  some  years 
ago,  an  old  professor  in  conversation  with  a 
young  American  woman  expressed  himself 
rather  positively  on  some  economic  question. 
She,  being  fairly  well  grounded  in  economics, 
ventured  to  differ,  and  began  to  give  her 
reasons  for  so  doing,  when  he  interrupted  her 
with  a  gesture  of  surprise  and  irritation,  and 
the  remark,  "I  am  not  accustomed  to  hear 
myself  contradicted  by  young  women." 

But  I  suppose  some  one  may  object,  "Why 
must  people  on  the  same  plane  inevitably 
collide?  Why  cannot  they  run  companion- 
ably  parallel?"  And  indeed  this  has  an  at 
tractive  sound;  but  people's  lives  do  not  run 


128  A  MATTER  OF  PLANES 

on  artificial  tracks.  They  may  move  along 
easily  side  by  side  for  a  while,  but  then  — 
crash!  The  collision  comes. 

If  you  still  doubt,  try  two  experiments. 
Find  two  people  deeply  interested  in 
theological  theory,  and  apparently  in  agree 
ment,  and  set  them  discussing  the  matter 
with  each  other  in  a  really  exhaustive  way. 
See  if  they  do  not  separate  with  some  little 
mutual  disapproval,  if  not  distrust.  "Ah! 

Mr. is  not  so  sound  as  I  had  supposed." 

Then,  to  make  the  test  on  the  little  things 
of  life,  take  two  people  the  most  harmonious 
possible,  find  them  in  an  amiable  mood,  —  I 
will  even  allow  you  to  give  them  a  good  din 
ner  first,  —  and  then  set  them  the  task  of 
choosing  wall-papers  for  their  country  home. 
Need  I  describe  the  outcome? 

Ah,  no !  Our  only  safety  lies  in  non-conflict 
ing  levels.  You  who  are  entering  on  a  matri 
monial  or  otherwise  friendly  compact,  put 
not  your  trust  in  a  harmony  based  on  positive 
agreement:  it  is  shifting  sand  beneath  your 
feet.  Ground  your  happiness  in  a  nice  dove 
tailing  of  eager  conviction  with  tolerant  in 
difference,  and  you  are  safe  for  a  lifetime. 


A  Meditation  Concerning  Forms 

IT  was  years  ago,  in  Heidelberg.  A  group  of 
young  Americans,  strolling  down  one  of  the 
quaint  old  streets  of  the  town,  approached 
the  office  of  the  American  Consul,  before 
which  hung  an  American  flag.  As  they  passed 
the  house  one  of  the  young  men  took  off  his 
hat.  The  man  beside  him  looked  at  him,  then 
glanced  quickly  about,  as  men  do,  to  locate 
the  person  he  was  greeting.  Another  of  the 
party  fell  back  and  said  to  him,  "Did  you  see 
a  friend?"  When  one  is  abroad,  chance  meet 
ings  gain  in  importance.  The  young  man 
smiled.  "  Why  —  yes  —  a  friend  of  mine  — 
and  of  yours  too,  I  suppose."  He  pointed 
back  toward  the  flag,  which  they  had  now 
passed.  "Oh!"  said  the  other,  feeling  a  little 
flat. 

"You  see,"  went  on  the  young  man,  a 
little  sheepishly,  —  an  American  man  is  al 
ways  sheepish  when  detected  in  what  may 
seem  a  bit  of  sentiment, — "I  served  in  the 
militia  a  good  while,  and  I  got  in  the  habit  of 


130    A  MEDITATION  CONCERNING  FORMS 

saluting  the  colors;  and  over  here  —  some 
how—" 

"Is  he  apologizing  because  he  saluted  his 
flag?"  broke  in  one  of  the  young  women.  "I 
think  it's  the  rest^of  us  that  ought  to  apolo- 
gize." 

The  party  moved  on,  and  the  incident  was 
forgotten  until,  years  afterward,  one  of  the 
group  learned  that  it  had  borne  fruit:  it  had 
set  a  fashion,  established  a  tradition.  For 
since  that  time  Americans  in  Heidelberg  have 
always  saluted  their  flag  where  it  hangs  before 
the  office  of  their  consul. 

All  this  came  into  my  mind  last  winter 
while  I  watched  another  little  scene,  this 
time  in  our  own  country,  in  a  New  England 
city.  The  President  of  the  United  States  had 
been  a  guest  in  a  house  where  some  of  us  had 
been  asked  to  meet  him.  The  President  was 
taking  leave,  and  I  made  one  of  a  group  at 
a  window  watching  the  Chief  Executive  and 
his  escort  take  their  places  in  the  automobiles. 
Groups  of  men  and  boys,  who  had  in  some 
way  discovered  what  was  happening,  were 
lounging  about  on  the  street  corners,  gazing 
curiously  at  the  Presidential  party.  The 


A  MEDITATION  CONCERNING  FORMS    131 

honorable  guests  and  the  honored  host  ex 
changed  salutes,  and  the  motor-cars  moved 
off,  while  the  crowd  watched,  with  its  hands 
in  its  pockets. 

As  the  group  in  the  window  looked  out  at 
the  scene  one  of  them  exclaimed:  "Well!  if 
that  isn't  the  limit!" 

"What?  "I  asked. 

"Why,  did  n't  you  see?  Not  a  man  of  them 
saluted.  They  just  rubbered !" 

Every  one  laughed,  then  we  grew  grave. 
"What  an  example  for  those  small  boys!" 
said  some  one.  And  we  fell  into  a  discussion 
of  American  manners  compared  with  Euro 
pean. 

Again,  last  summer,  I  was  one  of  a  huge 
audience  witnessing  an  outdoor  pageant.  It 
was  evening,  band  music  filled  the  air,  spec 
tacular  performances  were  going  on  in  a  bril 
liant  electric  illumination.  All  open  spaces 
were  thronged  and  bleachers  were  full.  Sud 
denly  a  few  people  among  those  on  the 
bleachers  rose  to  their  feet.  "Down!  Down 
in  front!  Sit  down,  can't  you?"  was  vari 
ously  shouted  by  those  behind,  and  there 
were  growling  comments  about  people  who 


132    A  MEDITATION  CONCERNING   FORMS 

stood  up  when,  if  everybody  sat  down,  every 
body  could  see.  The  offenders  remained 
standing.  The  growling  comments  went  on, 
until  suddenly  some  one  muttered,  "Shut  up! 
It's  'The  Star-Spangled  Banner'!"  Where 
upon  the  comments  died  away,  and  before 
the  band  had  ended  the  bleacher  crowd  was 
all  on  its  feet,  half  ashamed,  half  amused. 

Now,  I  find  that  these  three  scenes  group 
themselves  persistently  in  my  mind,  and  per 
sistently  recur,  producing  an  undercurrent 
of  speculation  and  perhaps  even  of  moral 
izing.  "Ought  these  things  so  to  be?"  I 
wonder.  We  Americans  are  often  congrat 
ulated,  we  often  congratulate  ourselves,  on 
our  emancipation  from  conventions,  from 
forms,  from  traditions.  But  are  we,  I  won 
der,  altogether  to  be  congratulated?  Is  it 
entirely  to  our  credit  that  we  are  able  to 
stand  on  street  corners  with  our  hats  on  our 
heads  and  our  hands  in  our  pockets  while 
our  Country,  embodied  in  its  Chief  Execu 
tive,  passes  by?  Shall  we  unreservedly  felici 
tate  ourselves  that  we  can  stroll  past  our 
country's  flag  without  an  impulse  to  salute 
it?  that  we  can  hear  one  of  our  national 


A  MEDITATION  CONCERNING  FORMS    133 

hymns  without  an  impulse  to  rise?  Is  this 
emancipation,  or  is  it  something  else? 

Certainly,  informality  and  unconvention- 
ality  are  good  things  within  limits,  [but  are 
we  perhaps  passing  these  limits?  For,  as 
psychologists  tell  us  that  we  cannot  think 
long  without  words,  so  perhaps  it  is  also  true 
that  we  cannot  feel  long  without  acts  —  and 
acts  are  forms.  Unquestionably  the  spirit  of 
loyalty  may  exist  while  one's  hat  is  on.  But 
I  wonder  if  taking  off  one's  hat  may  not 
perhaps  give  it  a  bit  of  encouragement  —  like 
a  friendly  pat  on  the  shoulder  of  a  boy  who 
is  doing  well. 

Moreover,  among  the  young  people  who 
are  growing  up  among  us,  who  "know  not 
Joseph,"  who  think  of  war  as  something  in 
a  textbook,  and  loyalty  as  something  men 
tioned  in  poetry  and  history  —  among  these, 
would  it  not  give  some  suggestion  and  stimu 
lus  to  the  spirit  of  patriotism,  innate  in  all 
of  us,  if  they  saw  those  around  them  giving 
some  tangible  evidences  of  the  feeling?  It  is 
undoubtedly  true  that  in  some  cases  a  feeling 
grows  through  being  repressed,  but  it  is  much 
more  often  true  that  it  grows  through  being 


134    A  MEDITATION  CONCERNING  FORMS 

expressed.  To  throw  stones  at  a  cat  tends  to 
make  a  boy  cruel,  while  to  feed  it  and  pet  it 
and  care  for  it  tends  to  make  him  tender 
hearted.  The  feeling  causes  the  action,  but 
the  action  reacts  on  the  feeling.  This  is  the 
vital  circuit. 

So  it  is  with  the  feelings  of  loyalty  and 
patriotism.  From  the  ages  of  savagery  down 
ward,  kings  and  priests,  whether  they  formu 
lated  the  theory  or  not,  acted  in  accordance 
with  sound  psychology  when  they  instituted 
elaborate  ceremonials  by  which  the  people 
might  give  expression  to  their  feeling  of  rever 
ence.  We  do  not  wish  to  return  to  barbarism. 
We  do  not  even  wish  to  wrap  ourselves  about 
in  all  the  forms  and  ceremonies  of  modern 
European  life,  as  they  appear  in  some  of  its 
phases.  But  I  wonder  whether,  in  throw 
ing  off  these  cumbrous  vestments,  we  have  not 
got  rid  of  a  little  too  much.  Might  there  not 
be  something  midway  between  the  full  regalia 
of  a  coronation  procession  and— let  us  say 
—  a  bathing  suit?  I  wonder,  to  change  the  fig 
ure,  whether,  in  our  reaction  from  all  formal 
ity,  we  are  not  in  danger,  as  the  Germans  say, 
of  "throwing  out  the  child  with  the  bath." 


The  Tyranny  of  Things 

Two  fifteen-year-old  girls  stood  eyeing  one 
another  on  first  acquaintance.  Finally  one 
little  girl  said,  "Which  do  you  like  best, 
people  or  things?"  The  other  little  girl  said, 
"Things."  They  were  friends  at  once. 

I  suppose  we  all  go  through  a  phase  when 
we  like  things  best;  and  not  only  like  them, 
but  want  to  possess  them  under  our  hand. 
The  passion  for  accumulation  is  upon  us.  We 
make  "collections,"  we  fill  our  rooms,  our 
walls,  our  tables,  our  desks,  with  things, 
things,  things. 

Many  people  never  pass  out  of  this  phase. 
They  never  see  a  flower  without  wanting  to 
pick  it  and  put  it  in  a  vase,  they  never  enjoy 
a  book  without  wanting  to  own  it,  nor  a  pic 
ture  without  wanting  to  hang  it  on  their  walls. 
They  keep  photographs  of  all  their  friends  and 
kodak  albums  of  all  the  places  they  visit,  they 
save  all  their  theater  programmes  and  dinner 
cards,  they  bring  home  all  their  alpenstocks. 
Their  houses  are  filled  with  an  undigested 


136          THE  TYRANNY  OF  THINGS 

mass  of  things,  like  the  terminal  moraine 
where  a  glacier  dumps  at  length  everything  it 
has  picked  up  during  its  progress  through 
the  lands. 

But  to  some  of  us  a  day  comes  when  we 
begin  to  grow  weary  of  things.  We  realize 
that  we  do  not  possess  them;  they  possess  us. 
Our  books  are  a  burden  to  us,  our  pictures 
have  destroyed  every  restful  wall-space,  our 
china  is  a  care,  our  photographs  drive  us  mad, 
our  programmes  and  alpenstocks  fill  us  with 
loathing.  We  feel  stifled  with  the  sense  of 
things,  and  our  problem  becomes,  not  how 
much  we  can  accumulate,  but  how  much  we 
can  do  without.  We  send  our  books  to  the 
village  library,  and  our  pictures  to  the  col 
lege  settlement.  Such  things  as  we  cannot 
give  away,  and  have  not  the  courage  to  de 
stroy,  we  stack  in  the  garret,  where  they  lie 
huddled  in  dim  and  dusty  heaps,  removed 
from  our  sight,  to  be  sure,  yet  still  faintly  im 
portunate. 

Then,  as  we  breathe  rhore  freely  in  the  clear 
space  that  we  have  made  for  ourselves,  we 
grow  aware  that  we  must  not  relax  our  vigi 
lance,  or  we  shall  be  once  more  overwhelmed. 


THE  TYRANNY  OF  THINGS          137 

For  it  is  an  age  of  things.  As  I  walk  through 
the  shops  at  Christmas  time  and  survey  their 
contents,  I  find  it  a  most  depressing  spectacle. 
All  of  us  have  too  many  things  already,  and 
here  are  more!  And  everybody  is  going  to 
send  some  of  them  to  everybody  else !  I  sym 
pathize  with  one  of  my  friends,  who,  at  the 
end  of  the  Christmas  festivities,  said,  "If  I 
see  another  bit  of  tissue  paper  and  red  ribbon, 
I  shall  scream." 

It  extends  to  all  our  doings.  For  every 
event  there  is  a  "souvenir."  We  cannot  go  to 
luncheon  and  meet  our  friends  but  we  must 
receive  a  token  to  carry  away.  Even  our 
children  cannot  have  a  birthday  party,  and 
play  games,  and  eat  good  things,  and  be 
happy.  The  host  must  receive  gifts  from 
every  little  guest,  and  provide  in  return  some 
little  remembrance  for  each  to  take  home. 
Truly,  on  all  sides  we  are  beset,  and  we  go 
lumbering  along  through  life  like  a  ship  en 
crusted  with  barnacles,  which  can  never  cut 
the  waves  clean  and  sure  and  swift  until  she 
has  been  scraped  bare  again.  And  there  seems 
little  hope  for  us  this  side  our  last  port. 

And  to  think  that  there  was  a  time  when 


138          THE  TYRANNY  OF  THINGS 

folk  had  not  even  that  hope!  When  a  man's 
possessions  were  burned  with  him,  so  that  he 
might,  forsooth,  have  them  all  about  him  in 
the  next  world!  Suffocating  thought!  To 
think  one  could  not  even  then  be  clear  of 
things,  and  make  at  least  a  fresh  start!  That 
must,  indeed,  have  been  in  the  childhood  of 
the  race. 

Once  upon  a  time,  when  I  was  very  tired, 
I  chanced  to  go  away  to  a  little  house  by 
the  sea.  "It  is  empty,"  they  said,  "but  you 
can  easily  furnish  it."  Empty!  Yes,  thank 
Heaven!  Furnish  it?  Heaven  forbid!  Its 
floors  were  bare,  its  walls  were  bare,  its 
tables  —  there  were  only  two  in  the  house  — 
were  bare.  There  was  nothing  in  the  closets 
but  books;  nothing  in  the  bureau  drawers  but 
the  smell  of  clean,  fresh  wood;  nothing  in  the 
kitchen  but  an  oil  stove,  and  a  few  —  a  very 
few  —  dishes;  nothing  in  the  attic  but  rafters 
and  sunshine,  and  a  view  of  the  sea.  After  I 
had  been  there  an  hour  there  descended  upon 
me  a  great  peace,  a  sense  of  freedom,  of  in 
finite  leisure.  In  the  twilight  I  sat  before  the 
flickering  embers  of  the  open  fire,  and  looked 
out  through  the  open  door  to  the  sea,  and 


THE  TYRANNY  OF  THINGS          139 

asked  myself,  "Why?"  Then  the  answer 
came:  I  was  emancipated  from  things.  There 
was  nothing  in  the  house  to  demand  care,  to 
claim  attention,  to  cumber  my  consciousness 
with  its  insistent,  unchanging  companionship. 
There  was  nothing  but  a  shelter,  and  outside, 
the  fields  and  marshes,  the  shore  and  the  sea. 
These  did  not  have  to  be  taken  down  and  put 
up  and  arranged  and  dusted  and  cared  for. 
They  were  not  things  at  all,  they  were  pow 
ers,  presences. 

And  so  I  rested.  While  the  spell  was  still 
unbroken,  I  came  away.  For  broken  it  would 
have  been,  I  know,  had  I  not  fled  first.  Even 
in  this  refuge  the  enemy  would  have  pursued 
me,  found  me  out,  encompassed  me. 

If  we  could  but  free  ourselves  once  for  all, 
how  simple  life  might  become !  One  of  my 
friends,  who,  with  six  young  children  and 
only  one  servant,  keeps  a  spotless  house  and 
a  soul  serene,  told  me  once  how  she  did  it. 
"My  dear,  once  a  month  I  give  away  every 
single  thing  in  the  house  that  we  do  not  im 
peratively  need.  It  sounds  wasteful,  but  I 
don't  believe  it  really  is.  Sometimes  Jere 
miah  mourns  over  missing  old  clothes,  or  back 


140          THE  TYRANNY  OF  THINGS 

numbers  of  the  magazines,  but  I  tell  him  if 
he  does  n't  want  to  be  mated  to  a  gibbering 
maniac  he  will  let  me  do  as  I  like." 

The  old  monks  knew  all  this  very  well. 
One  wonders  sometimes  how  they  got  their 
power;  but  go  up  to  Fiesole,  and  sit  a  while  in 
one  of  those  little,  bare,  white-walled  cells, 
and  you  will  begin  to  understand.  If  there 
were  any  spiritual  force  in  one,  it  would  have 
to  come  out  there. 

I  have  not  their  courage,  and  I  win  no  such 
freedom.  I  allow  myself  to  be  overwhelmed 
by  the  invading  host  of  things,  making  fitful 
resistance,  but  without  any  real  steadiness  of 
purpose.  Yet  never  do  I  wholly  give  up  the 
struggle,  and  in  my  heart  I  cherish  an  ideal, 
remotely  typified  by  that  empty  little  house 
beside  the  sea. 


The  Tyranny  of  Facts 

ONCE  upon  a  time,  very  long,  ago,  when  I  was 
young,  I  used  to  dream  of  all  the  things  I 
would  some  day  possess.  As  time  went  on, 
the  nature  of  the  things  I  coveted  changed, 
but  not  the  dream  of  possession.  Then,  as 
some  of  these  dreams  found  their  fulfillment, 
a  fundamental  reconstruction  of  ideals  took 
place.  I  dreamed  no  longer  of  possession,  but 
of  enfranchisement;  I  no  longer  wished  for 
more  things,  but  only  for  the  power  to  cope 
with  the  things  I  already  had  —  or  that  had 
me.  And  at  last  my  strongest  desire  was  to 
possess  nothing  —  but  friends. 

Of  late,  I  notice,  the  same  thing  that  hap 
pened  in  my  house  has  happened  in  my  head. 
There  was  a  time  when  I  loved  to  collect  in 
formation.  Facts  —  all  facts  —  were  precious 
to  me,  and  I  loved  to  feel  them  making  piles 
and  stacks  and  rows  in  my  brain.  Every 
thing  was  welcome,  from  the  names  of  the 
stars  to  the  prepositions  that  governed  the 
Latin  ablative,  from  the  dynasties  of  Egypt 


142  THE  TYRANNY  OF  FACTS 

to  the  geography  lists  of  "state  products"  — 
"corn,  wheat,  and  potatoes,"  "rice,  sugar, 
cotton,  and  tobacco."  While  this  mania  was 
upon  me,  dictionaries  allured  me,  cyclo 
paedias  held  me  spellbound.  I  was  even  able 
to  read  with  interest  the  annals  of  the  "Swiss 
Family  Robinson,"  a  book  which  presents 
more  facts  per  page  than  any  other  volume 
in  that  great  and  unclassified  mob  called 
"fiction." 

What  were  the  causes  and  processes  of 
change  I  cannot  say.  Possibly  an  overdose  of 
facts  produced  reaction.  At  all  events,  the 
change  took  place,  and  the  time  has  now 
come  when,  just  as  I  deprecate  the  arrival  of 
new  possessions  in  my  house,  even  thus  do 
I  deplore  the  stream  of  information  whose 
constant,  relentless  flow  into  my  unwilling 
consciousness  I  am  powerless  to  prevent.  For 
I  find  that  whereas  during  my  years  of  en 
thusiasm  for  accumulation  everything  com 
bined  to  help  me,  now  that  my  endeavors  are 
reversed  the  powers  arrayed  against  me  are 
mighty.  The  Sunday  newspaper,  which  is  the 
embodiment  of  information  invading  the  last 
stronghold  of  peace,  —  this  I  can  and  do  bar 


THE  TYRANNY  OF  FACTS  143 

out  of  my  house;  but  on  week-days  the  news 
papers  have  things  their  own  way.  They 
invade  my  morning  quiet,  they  disturb  my 
evening  calm,  they  render  the  male  section  of 
my  family  indifferent  to  morning  coffee  and 
dilatory  before  evening  soup.  Nor  am  I  my 
self  exempt  from  the  baleful  influence.  Vari 
ous  digests  of  the  "world's  news"  lie  con 
stantly  upon  my  table,  and  I  am  occasionally 
weak  enough  to  think  it  my  duty  to  read 
them,  "so  as  to  be  a  little  intelligent,  you 
know,"  as  a  firm-minded  aunt  of  mine  is  in 
the  habit  of  saying.  In  this  unwilling  en 
deavor  to  acquire  intelligence  I  stultify  what 
little  of  that  faculty  I  may  have  been  origin 
ally  endowed  with,  I  stuff  my  brain  with 
cotton,  in  the  form  of  "science  brevities," 
"literary  jottings,"  "religious  notes,"  "po 
litical  news,"  and  so  on.  And  then  for  a  time 
a  violent  reaction  sets  in,  and  I  eschew  all 
informing  books  and  hie  me  to  Lamb,  to 
Shelley,  to  Malory,  to  Homer.  These  are  my 
joy,  my  recreation,  my  tonic. 

Nor  is  it  only  the  newspapers  and  their 
kind  with  which  I  have  to  contend.  My 
dearest  friends  are  traitors  and  my  foes  are 


144  THE  TYRANNY  OF  FACTS 

they  of  my  own  household.  For  they  cling  to 
the  possessions  of  their  brains,  they  are  busy 
amassing  more,  they  survey  them  with  satis 
faction  and  exhibit  them  with  pride,  so  that  I 
am  driven  to  question,  which  of  us  is  right? 
Is  the  change  in  me  due  to  growing  wisdom 
or  to  oncoming  senility? 

In  my  outdoor  life  the  same  issue  is  con 
stantly  presenting  itself.  I  love  birds  and 
flowers.  In  fact,  I  believe  that  I  honestly  love 
that  grand  and  joyous  conglomerate  usually 
called  "Nature."  There  was  a  time,  more 
over,  during  that  remote  period  of  which  I 
have  spoken,  when  I  possessed  a  respectable 
amount  of  information  about  these  matters. 
Just  as,  in  my  lust  for  physical  possessions, 
I  collected  butterflies  and  eggs  and  flowers, 
even  so  in  my  lust  for  intellectual  possessions 
I  accumulated  knowledge  —  I  learned  all 
their  names,  I  knew  all  about  their  wings  and 
their  spots  and  their  petals  and  their  seeds 
and  their  roots  and  whatever  else  apper 
tained  to  them.  It  amazes  me  now  when  I 
occasionally  stumble  upon  some  record  of  my 
former  knowledge.  I  feel  like  saying,  with  the 
old  woman  in  Mother  Goose,  — 


THE  TYRANNY  OF  FACTS  145 

"  Lawk  a  massy  on  me! 
This  is  none  of  I!" 

But  following  my  feeling  of  amazement  there 
usually  comes  one  of  relief  —  how  glad  I  am 
that  I  don't  know  all  that  now!  I  still  love 
"Nature,"  but  when  I  have  found  the  lovely 
flower  in  the  meadow  or  the  deep  wood,  I  do 
not  hasten  to  pick  it  and  bring  it  home  and 
analyze  it  and  press  it.  I  am  content  to  lie 
down  beside  it  a  while  and  enjoy  its  compan 
ionship,  its  beauty,  its  fragrance,  whatever  it 
has  of  charm  and  comeliness,  and  then  I  leave 
it  and  pass  on.  When  I  hear  a  sweet  bird- 
note,  I  pause  and  listen  as  it  comes  again  and 
yet  again.  But  I  do  not  pursue  the  bird  with 
an  opera-glass  to  count  its  feathers  and  esti 
mate  its  dimensions,  and  then  hurry  home  to 
my  "bird  books"  to  "look  it  up"  and  make 
a  marginal  note  of  the  date.  When  I  see 
butterflies  fluttering  about  the  lilacs  and  the 
syringas  and  the  phlox,  I  stand  quiet  and 
watch  them  —  those  huge  pale  yellow  ones 
banded  with  black  that  love  to  hang  about 
lavender  flowers  —  do  they  know  what  a 
lovely  chord  of  color  they  strike?  those  dark 
ones  with  blues  and  greens  splashed  on  their 


146  THE  TYRANNY  OF  FACTS 

wing-edges,  those  rich  rusty-red  ones,  with 
pure  silver  flashes  on  their  under  sides,  those 
little  jagged- winged  beauties  with  all  the 
colors  of  an  Oriental  rug  —  old  reds,  old 
blues,  old  yellows  —  all  mottled  together. 
Ah,  they  are  all  delightful,  and  as  I  watch 
this  favorite  and  that,  holding  my  breath  lest 
I  scare  him  into  flight,  I  find  myself  smiling 
to  think,  I  knew  his  name  once ! 

But  most  of  my  friends  still  know  their 
names.  They  have  opera-glasses  and  note 
books,  and  a  prodigious  amount  of  informa 
tion.  They  keep  tally  of  the  number  of  birds 
they  see  in  a  day  or  on  a  walk  or  on  a  drive, 
of  the  number  of  new  birds  or  flowers  they 
recognize  in  a  season.  They  call  me  up  by 
telephone  to  tell  me  that  the  beautiful  crea 
ture  we  had  seen  in  a  certain  tree  was,  after 
all,  not  the  Apteryx  Americanus,  but  the 
Apteryx  Warrensis,  a  much  rarer  variety  of 
the  same  species,  with  longer  tail  feathers 
and  two  more  white  feathers  in  the  wing  than 
his  commonplace  cousin. 

Amid  such  whirlpools  of  information  I  feel 
that  I  am  unable  to  hold  my  own,  and  so  I 
try  to  drift  out,  but  now  and  again  I  am 


THE  TYRANNY  OF  FACTS  147 

drawn  in,  and  I  find  myself  growing  stupid  as 
I  bend  over  my  friends'  bird  books.  I  give 
myself  headaches  looking  at  their  butterfly 
cabinets  —  real  butterflies  on  the  phlox  and 
the  lilacs  never  seem  to  give  me  headaches. 

I  have  said  that  I  do  not  regret  the  change 
in  myself,  that  I  would  not,  if  I  could,  gather 
up  the  stores  of  information  I  once  possessed 
and  refurnish  my  brain  with  them,  —  no,  not 
even  if  I  could  arrange  them  all  in  order, 
cleaned  and  dusted  and  sorted  ready  to  be 
used  or  admired.  Let  them  go!  Some  of  them 
have  already  gone  altogether,  thrown  away, 
dropped  into  cracks,  burned  up,  ground  into 
powder,  dissolved  into  nothing.  Some  lie, 
perhaps,  piled  up  in  the  dusty  garrets  of  my 
brain,  huddled  together  in  formless  heaps,  or 
stowed  close  in  the  old  chests  of  memory  that 
are  never  opened.  If  I  searched  I  might  find 
them,  and  drag  them  out,  and  perhaps  among 
them  I  might  discover  some  treasures,  but  I 
shall  never  search.  I  shall  let  them  all  lie  to 
gether  in  the  quiet,  dusty  twilight,  not  to  be 
disturbed  until  the  whole  mansion,  from  dim 
attic  to  sunlit  living-rooms,  shall  perish  to  be 
known  no  more. 


Travelers'  Letters 

I  AM  not  a  traveling  person,  but  many  of  my 
friends  are,  and  as  the  season  of  the  year 
arrives  when  they  are  saying  good-bye  and 
departing  to  the  ends  of  the  earth,  I  am  de 
pressed.  Let  no  one  misunderstand  me.  I  am 
not  depressed  because  of  the  good-byes.  I 
love  my  friends,  and  it  gives  me  a  pang  to  see 
the  gangplank  pulled  in,  but  after  they  are 
gone  and  I  have  taken  up  my  placid  way 
again,  I  am  well  content  in  a  realization  of 
their  existence  and  their  welfare.  Nor  is  it 
the  outward  ceremonies,  the  pomp  and  cir 
cumstance  of  departure  that  I  envy  them. 
My  small  contributions  to  it  —  boxes  of 
candy,  baskets  of  oranges,  modest  pints  of 
champagne  —  these  I  send  cheerfully,  nothing 
grudging,  though  I  confess  to  regret  when  they 
miss  fire,  or  are  absorbed  by  the  steward  on 
the  way. 

Nor,  lastly,  do  I  envy  them  their  travels. 
The  ends  of  the  earth  to  which  they  wend  are, 
no  doubt,  pleasant;  but  my  end  is  pleasant, 


TRAVELERS'  LETTERS  149 

too,  and  I  do  not  repine  that  my  summer 
paths  are  the  quiet,  homely  ones  of  old  New 
England. 

No,  my  depression  arises  from  none  of 
these  things.  It  comes  —  I  hesitate  to  con 
fess  the  brutal  truth  —  from  the  thought  of 
the  letters  my  Summer-in-Europe  friends  will 
write  me.  There!  It  is  told! 

And  yet,  I  insist,  I  am  really  not  a  brute. 
I  love  my  friends  dearly,  and  when  they  go 
away  to  certain  places  —  Maine,  or  the 
White  Mountains,  or  Cape  Cod — I  love  to  get 
letters  from  them.  But  not  when  they  go  to 
Europe.  There  is  something  about  Europe  — 
and,  I  may  add,  California  and  all  World's 
Fairs  —  that  works  mortal  havoc  with  the 
friendly  letter.  I  might  almost  say  that  so 
far  as  I  am  concerned  a  real,  genuine  friendly 
letter  from  Europe  does  not  exist,  unless  the 
writer  has  settled  down  and  lived  in  Europe 
until  it  has  become  home.  Perhaps  this  is  the 
real  trouble.  My  friends  galloping  about  the 
map  are  not  at  home.  They  are  alert,  beset 
with  outward  experiences  to  which  they  are 
giving  continuous,  restless  response,  and  their 
letters  are  correspondingly  rapid,  restless,  ex- 


150  TRAVELERS'  LETTERS 

ternal,  full  of  places  and  things  and  people, 
viewed  rapidly  and  superficially;  and  all,  no 
matter  from  whom,  bear  a  strong  family  re 
semblance  —  they  are  travelers'  letters.  They 
reek  of  hotels  and  trains,  they  suggest  monu 
ments,  museums  —  in  a  word  —  "sights." 

Now,  I  have  no  objection  to  "sights"  as 
such,  nor  to  hotels  and  trains  and  museums. 
Monuments,  indeed,  of  all  sorts,  except  the 
Pyramids,  I  do  hold  in  execration,  but  I 
try  not  to  be  unpleasant  about  them,  and  it 
is  only  when  these  things  are  offered  me  as 
a  substitute  for  friends  that  I  protest. 

I  am  not  unreasonable.  I  do  not  expect  all 
my  friends  to  be  brilliant  letter  writers.  A 
dull  letter  from  a  dear  friend  is  one  of  the  com 
monest  —  and  pleasantest  —  things  '  in  life. 
But  I  want  to  feel  my  friend,  not  Europe,  at 
the  other  end  of  the  letter.  If  she  is  at  home, 
in  her  habitual  courses,  she  writes  me  little, 
pleasant  humdrum  things  about  her  life,  gives 
me  a  glimpse  of  her  moods,  of  her  real  welfare. 
She  does  this  even,  as  I  have  said,  if  she  is  at 
Cape  Cod,  or  down  in  Maine.  But  abroad  she 
cannot  do  it  —  instead  she  tries  to  serve  up 
Europe  to  me !  And  Europe  I  can  do  without, 


TRAVELERS'  LETTERS  151 

at  least  Europe  in  just  this  form.  Parts  of  it 
I,  even  I,  have  seen.  And  for  the  rest  I  am 
content  to  wait,  or  if,  meanwhile,  I  grow  im 
patient,  and  wish  to  learn  more  about  Venice 
or  Paris  or  the  Tyrol,  about  this  picture  or 
that  cathedral,  I  know  several  ways  of  find 
ing  out.  From  my  friends  abroad,  all  I  ask  is 
a  friendly  letter  now  and  then,  but,  ah  me! 
this  is  the  very  thing  I  never  get!  Why,  it 
passes  me  to  say.  Is  European  travel  a  uni 
versal  leveler,  blotting  out  all  individuality, 
an  encouragement  of  the  commonplace  and 
the  external?  Is  every  one  uninteresting 
away  from  home?  I  have  sometimes  thought 
so,  as  I  have  surveyed  a  steamerful  of  people 
or  an  automobile-load  of  tourists.  And  yet 
this  does  not  seem  wholly  probable.  At  all 
events,  though  I  cannot  account  for  them, 
I  am  sure  of  my  facts.  Already  I  feel  in  an 
ticipation  the  dreariness  of  those  first  letters 
that  will  come  traveling  back  to  me  —  letters 
written  usually  in  pale  ink  or  in  pencil,  on 
very  thin  paper,  and  usually  cross-lined. 
Perhaps,  now  I  think  of  it,  this  adds  a  last 
touch  of  exasperation  to  my  feelings  —  this 
thin  paper  and  bad  ink.  If  they  would  only 


152  TRAVELERS*  LETTERS 

use  a  good,  thick,  cream-white  sheet  and 
write  half  the  amount,  I  should  take  it  kindly, 
but  I  find  it  doubly  irritating  to  spend  an 
hour,  in  a  good  light,  deciphering  things  that 
are  entirely  indifferent  to  me  when  read.  It 
tries  me,  when  I  want  to  know  from  Beatrice 
whether  Hero's  hair  is  growing  in  curly  or 
straight  after  her  fever,  to  work  painfully 
among  cross-hatchings,  only  to  discover  that 
"we  took  the  train  at  5  P.M.  and  arrived  at 
7,  in  time  for  supper  on  the  summit  —  the 
view  was  magnificent  —  wish  you  were  with 
us!" 

There  are,  of  course,  exceptions.  One  of 
my  friends  once  spent  a  long  summer  in  a 
tiny  village  in  the  Black  Forest.  She  wrote 
comfortable,  homey  letters  about  nothing  in 
particular,  and  I  treasured  them.  But  this 
exception  only  proves  my  point  —  she  did 
not  write  traveling  letters  because  she  did  not 
travel.  Again,  another  friend  once  sent  me  a 
letter  from  Florence  that  was  a  gem.  Pictures? 
Monasteries?  Olive  groves?  No,  none  of 
these  were  remotely  mentioned  —  thank  for 
tune!  Her  letter  was  one  long  tirade  against 
the  habits  of  a  certain  group  of  foreigners  — 


TRAVELERS'  LETTERS  153 

I  will  not  say  of  what  nation  —  in  regard  to 
their  use  of  the  toothpick!  She  was  in  such  a 
state  of  exasperation  when  she  wrote  it  that 
she  was  absolutely  herself.  I  felt  as  if  she  had 
sat  beside  me,  temper  and  all,  and  I  had 
heard  and  seen  her  talk.  I  did  not  care  in  the 
least  about  foreign  manners,  but  oh,  that  was 
a  good  letter!  Which  again,  I  think,  proves 
my  point. 

Yes,  my  summer  letters  are  dreary  affairs. 
And  of  late  years  my  troubles  are  aggravated 
by  that  last  insult  to  friendship,  the  "sou 
venir"  post-card.  At  this  point  language  fails 
me.  I  have  no  words  in  which  to  speak  of  this 
abomination.  It  symbolizes  the  triumph  of 
the  commonplace,  of  the  cheap-and-easy,  the 
utter  capitulation  of  individuality.  And  they 
will  pour  in  upon  me  —  post-cards  in  black 
and  white,  post-cards  in  colors,  post-cards  of 
all  the  famous  pictures,  of  all  the  cathedrals, 
views,  mountains,  hotels,  donkeys,  peasants, 
in  all  tourist-Europe,  and  occasionally,  horror 
of  horrors,  comic  post-cards!  On  their  edges 
will  be  scrawled  flying  words,  and  some  ini 
tials,  and  as  I  decipher  them  I  can  see  the 
counter  where  the  things  were  purchased  — 


154  TRAVELERS'  LETTERS 

the  crowd  of  tourists  choosing  "sets,"  some 
for  collections,  some  for  poor  absent  friends 
like  me;  I  can  see  them  scribbling  their  mes 
sages,  with  ink  and  pen  furnished  by  the 
provident  shopkeeper,  and  then  hurrying  on 
to  their  trains  or  their  boats  or  their  trams. 
Souvenir  post-cards  indeed!  To  me  who 
loathe  the  very  name  of  souvenir!  To  me 
who  so  dearly  love  a  quiet  letter  from  a  friend, 
written  infrequently,  perhaps,  but  in  peace  of 
spirit ! 

There  seems  to  be  no  hope  ahead.  As  the 
summers  pass  my  trials  of  this  sort  grow 
greater  rather  than  less.  The  letters  grow 
more  and  more  rapid,  more  and  more  rest 
less,  more  and  more  external,  and  the  post 
cards  pile  up  ad  nauseam  !  I  have  never  pro 
tested  before,  except  in  spirit.  I  can  do  so 
now  only  under  the  shelter  of  anonymity.  If 
I  criticize  my  friends  it  will  pain  them,  and,  I 
persist,  I  love  my  friends  dearly.  And  so  as 
the  season  comes  round,  I  am  depressed. 
Some  summer  I  may  even  be  driven  to  go  to 
Europe  myself  I 


The  Novelist's  Choice 

FOR  a  number  of  years,  in  my  desultory  novel- 
reading,  I  have  found  myself  occasionally 
dropping  into  a  particular  line  of  speculation. 
As  I  re-read  "The  Mill  on  the  Floss,"  for  in 
stance,  I  fall  to  wondering  what  kind  of  story 
it  would  have  made  if  George  Eliot  had 
allowed  Tom  to  tell  it.  He  would  have  done 
it  bluntly,  honestly,  without  condoning  his 
own  faults  and  mistakes,  we  may  be  sure;  but 
also,  we  may  be  equally  sure,  without  con 
doning  Maggie's.  We  should  probably  have 
been  left  in  the  dark  as  to  the  motiving  of  her 
acts.  Stephen  Guest  would  have  fared  rather 
badly,  Philip  Wakem  even  worse,  and  Mrs. 
Tulliver  and  Sister  Glegg  and  Sister  Pullet 
would  hardly  have  come  in  as  characters  at 
all,  since  Tom  had  none  of  the  special  sort  of 
humorous  sense  to  which  they  appeal.  Very 
likely  Tom  would  have  failed  as  signally  to 
do  justice  to  his  own  character  as  to  Maggie's 
-  his  powers  were  not  in  the  line  of  conscious 
self-portrayal. 


156  THE  NOVELIST'S  CHOICE 

The  more  I  speculate  about  this,  the  more 
amused  and  interested  I  am.  And  when, 
after  it,  I  come  back  to  the  real  story,  as  it 
was  actually  written,  I  find  myself  keener 
to  appreciate  the  things  which  I  discover 
there  —  the  embodied  result  of  the  novelist's 
choice  to  tell  her  story  as  she  did. and  not 
otherwise. 

I  have  sometimes  tried  "Henry  Esmond" 
in  the  same  way.  I  fancy  it  told,  for  example, 
through  the  letters  or  the  diary  of  Beatrix. 
What  a  stormy  recital  it  would  be!  Frag 
mentary,  capricious,  concealing  more  than  it 
revealed,  for  Beatrix  would  never  have  been 
what  is  called  simply  honest,  even  with  her 
self.  And  yet,  whatever  she  wrote,  however 
she  posed,  whatever  tricks  of  the  spirit  she 
perpetrated,  I  fancy  we  could  have  guessed  at 
her  story  and  her  nature  in  spite  of  herself. 
The  more  one  thinks  of  it,  the  more  one  longs 
for  a  chance  to  try,  anyhow  —  to  have  at 
those  letters  or  that  diary.  And  then  one 
remembers,  —  to  be  sure!  there  are  no  letters, 
there  is  no  diary;  we  were  only  supposing. 
What  a  pity!  Yet  could  we,  for  their  sakes, 
give  up  the  story  as  it  is? 


THE  NOVELIST'S  CHOICE  157 

Or,  again,  imagine  the  story  told  in  the 
modern,  dramatic  way:  not  by  any  character 
acting  as  narrator,  not  by  the  author  as 
author,  not  by  anybody  self-confessed,  but 
allowed  to  enact  itself  upon  the  pages  of  the 
book  as  upon  a  stage  —  a  few  stage-directions 
supplied  in  place  of  scenery  and  real  action, 
each  participant  speaking  in  turn,  and  the 
reader  left  to  orient  himself  as  he  can.  Fancy 
the  beginning:  — 

"  My  name  is  Henry  Esmond." 

"  His  name  is  Henry  Esmond,  sure  enough," 
said  Mrs.  Worksop. 

"  So  this  is  the  little  priest,"  said  Lord 
Castlewood.  "  Welcome,  kinsman." 

"He  is  saying  his  prayers  to  Mamma!" 
said  little  Beatrix. 

But  no,  don't  fancy  it!  Let  us  stop  right 
here,  and  go  back  to  those  leisurely  and  delib 
erate  first  chapters  as  they  now  stand.  Al 
ready  one  feels  a  little  ashamed  of  having 
allowed  one's  self  to  lay  such  unhallowed 
hands  upon  the  tale,  and  one  determines  to 
cease  experimenting,  at  least  upon  Henry 
Esmond,  and  leave  him  to  the  undisputed 
possession  of  his  grave,  decorous,  and  alto- 


158  THE  NOVELIST'S  CHOICE 

gether  delightful  narrative.  And  yet,  this 
habit  of  speculation  once  formed,  one  is 
tempted  ever  afresh  to  its  indulgence  — 
tempted  often  at  the  most  unexpected  point: 
as  I  read  over  the  pretty  drama  of  "Romeo 
and  Juliet,"  I  am  by  some  freak  of  the  mind 
led  to  wonder  what  their  story  would  sound 
like,  told  by  Juliet's  nurse. 

It  seems  curious  that  writers  themselves 
have  not  experimented  in  this  way  with  their 
own  material.  Browning,  indeed,  the  king  of 
experimenters,  did  it  once.  But,  except  "The 
Ring  and  the  Book,"  I  do  not  think  of  any 
thing  of  the  kind.  And  "The  Ring  and  the 
Book"  is  so  much  more  than  a  study  in  story 
telling  that  it  is  as  well  to  leave  it  with  this 
passing  mention. 

Obviously,  it  makes  a  difference,  this  choice 
of  the  novelist.  It  is,  of  course,  only  one  of 
the  things  that  go  to  determining  what  a 
novel  will  be  like,  but  it  is  surely  one.  Thack 
eray  is  always  Thackeray,  whether  he  chooses 
to  tell  his  tale  through  the  mouth  of  one  of  his 
characters  or  to  step  forward  in  his  own  per 
son  and  talk  frankly  about  his  people  as  they 
pass  before  him.  He  is  still  Thackeray,  yet 


THE  NOVELIST'S  CHOICE  159 

there  is  a  vast  difference  between  the  at 
mosphere  of  "Esmond,"  which  gives  us  the 
peaceful  and  deliberate  reminiscences  of  an 
old  man,  and  the  atmosphere  of  "Vanity 
Fair,"  where  the  author  is  avowedly  himself, 
like  a  showman  with  his  puppets.  Perhaps  it 
was  the  choice  of  the  novelist  that  produced 
the  difference,  perhaps  it  was  something  in 
herent  in  the  two  tales,  as  he  regarded  them, 
that  led  to  the  choice.  At  all  events,  the 
choice  itself  is  worth  thinking  of. 

The  expedient  of  putting  a  story  into  the 
mouth  of  one  of  the  actors  in  it  —  that  is,  the 
autobiographical  method  —  has  great  anti 
quity,  being  at  least  as  old  as  the  Odyssey. 
Vernon  Lee,  in  an  interesting  if  whimsical 
essay  of  hers  on  "  Literary  Construction," 
maintains  that  it  is  essentially  an  expedient 
of  immaturity.  "I  have  no  doubt,"  she  says, 
"that  most  of  the  stories  which  we  have  all 
written  between  the  ages  of  fif  teen  and  twenty 
were  either  in  the  autobiographical  or  the 
epistolary  form  .  .  .  and  altogether  repro 
duced,  in  their  immaturity,  the  forms  of  an 
immature  period  of  novel-writing,  just  as 
Darwinism  tells  us  that  the  feet  and  legs  of 


160  THE  NOVELIST'S  CHOICE 

babies  reproduce  the  feet  and  legs  of  mon 
keys.  For,  difficult  as  it  is  to  realize,  the 
apparently  simplest  form  of  construction  is 
by  far  the  most  difficult;  and  the  straight 
forward  narrative  of  men  and  women's  feel 
ings  and  passions,  of  anything  save  their 
merest  outward  acts  —  the  narrative  which 
makes  the  thing  pass  naturally  before  the 
reader's  mind  —  is  by  far  the  most  difficult, 
as  it  is  the  most  perfect." 

Stevenson,  whose  powers  as  a  story-teller 
can  hardly  be  called  immature,  yet  averred 
that  it  was  the  easiest  way.  He  writes  to 
Edmund  Gosse, "  Yes,  honestly,  fiction  is  very 
difficult.  .  .  .  And  the  difficulty  of  according 
the  narrative  and  the  dialogue  (in  a  work  in 
the  third  person)  is  extreme.  That  is  one 
reason  out  of  half  a  dozen  why  I  so  often 
prefer  the  first." 

Evidently  here  he  was  thinking  more  of 
style  than  of  construction,  and  one  would  like 
to  know  the  rest  of  the  half  dozen  reasons 
why  he  preferred  the  first  person  for  his  sto 
ries.  Perhaps  we  can  guess  at  some  of  them. 
For  the  autobiographical  form  seems  to  settle 
a  good  many  other  matters  besides  this  one 


THE  NOVELIST'S  CHOICE  161 

of  literary  pitch.  It  prescribes  in  many  ways 
the  point  of  view.  The  general  attitude  of  the 
actor-narrator  toward  the  chain  of  events 
which  he  relates,  is  predetermined  by  his  own 
part  in  those  events. 

But  probably  the  strongest  justification  for 
the  form  is  that  it  carries  with  it  a  certain 
air  of  genuineness.  A  man's  own  story  has 
a  value  as  such,  as  the  newspaper  interview 
testifies  every  day.  It  imposes  upon  us,  in 
spite  of  ourselves,  a  prepossession  in  favor  of 
its  truth.  Now,  whatever  else  the  novelist 
may  wish  to  do,  he  always,  first  of  all,  wishes 
to  create  in  his  readers  this  illusion  of  reality. 
He  wants  to  have  his  story  seem  true.  He 
knows,  indeed,  that  it  is  not  true.  We  know 
it  is  not  true.  He  knows  that  we  know.  And 
yet,  he  will  spend  months  in  dull  research  for 
the  sake  of  supplying  his  tale  with  certain 
small  earmarks  of  veracity  that  may,  per 
chance,  trick  the  public  into  a  moment  of 
doubt.  He  will  furnish  forth  his  story  with 
elaborate  introductions  and  appendices,  ac 
counting  for  his  own  share,  and  the  pub 
lisher's  share,  in  it,  with  the  hope  that  he  may 
be  able  to  persuade  us,  at  least  for  half  an 


162  THE  NOVELIST'S  CHOICE 

hour,  that  he,  the  author,  is  really  and  truly 
only  the  "interested  friend"  to  whom  the 
papers  were  left;  that  he  has  really  been  only 
the  recipient  of  a  dying  confession,  only  the 
discoverer  of  a  long-hidden  diary.  And  if  he 
succeeds,  what  triumph!  Is  there  any  one 
who  would  be  proof  against  the  flattery  im 
plied  in  such  inquiries  as  were  aroused  by 
"Nancy  Stair"  as  to  the  real  genealogy  of 
the  Stair  family? 

To  this  endeavor  to  make  his  story  seem 
like  the  narrative  of  actual  occurrences  the 
novelist  has  been  partly  driven  by  the  atti 
tude  of  his  readers.  "Convincing"  is  the 
critic's  word  now  —  a  novel  must  be  "  con 
vincing."  The  word  is  modern,  the  attitude 
which  it  connotes  is  modern.  Not  that  read 
ers  of  old  did  not  find  pleasure  in  giving  them 
selves  up  to  the  story-teller.  But  they  gave 
themselves  up  more  easily  than  readers  do 
now.  The  old  story-teller  began  his  tale 
smoothly  enough:  "There  was  once  a  beauti 
ful  girl,  who  had  a  cruel  step-mother  and  two 
wicked  step-sisters."  Very  good.  His  listen 
ers,  with  a  habit  of  acquiescence,  accepted  at 
once  the  beauty  of  the  heroine,  the  cruelty 


THE  NOVELIST'S  CHOICE  163 

and  wickedness  of  the  others.  For  them  the 
tale  was  sufficiently  convincing.  Even  the 
fairy  godmother  passed  unchallenged.  Who 
knew  that  fairy  godmothers  might  not  exist 
somewhere? 

But  we  have  lost  the  habit  of  acquiescence. 
We  are  proving  all  things,  and  we  hold  fast 
to  very  little.  We  challenge,  we  scrutinize, 
we  dissect.  We  have  opinions  about  the  lim 
its  of  the  possible,  the  probable,  and  the  inev 
itable.  And  nothing  really  satisfies  us  but  the 
inevitable. 

To  make  his  tale  seem  inevitable,  then,  is 
the  author's  ambition,  and  he  is  aware  that 
if  he  is  to  do  this  he  cannot  get  to  work  in  the 
old  manner.  If  he  begins,  "There  was  once  a 
beautiful  girl,  with  a  cruel  step-mother  and 
two  wicked  — "  "Ah,  wait!"  says  his  reader, 
"this  will  never  do.  Cruelty  and  wickedness 
are  easy  words  to  say,  but  the  things  them 
selves  are  not  to  be  thus  lightly  denominated. 
One  must  discriminate.  How  about  the  step 
mother's  point  of  view?  In  just  what  way 
was  she  cruel?  How  did  she  become  so?  How 
do  you  know  she  existed  at  all?  She  does  not 
seem  to  us  a  very  real  person.  She  is  not  con- 


164  THE  NOVELIST'S  CHOICE 

vincing.  I  don't  think  I  care  to  finish  this 
story." 

The  modern  story-teller  cannot  help  being 
conscious  of  this  attitude  on  the  part  of  his 
readers.  Probably  he  has  it  himself,  to  some 
extent,  toward  his  own  material.  What  won 
der,  then,  if,  aware  of  the  effectiveness  of  the 
expedient,  he  passes  his  story  over  to  one  of 
his  characters,  and  loads  upon  his  shoulders 
the  burden  of  making  it  "convincing." 

This  seems,  on  the  face  of  it,  an  easy  way 
out.  It  shifts  responsibility  from  the  author 
to  the  hero,  or  whoever  it  is  who  is  telling  the 
story.  "How  do  I  know?  I  know  because  I 
was  there.  She  was  my  step-mother."  It  is 
the  old  reply  of  JSneas  to  Dido:  "Quorum 
pars  magna  fui." 

And  not  merely  an  easy  way  out,  but  often 
an  excellent  way.  We  have  only  to  run  over 
a  few  titles,  to  realize  the  possibilities  of  the 
autobiography  as  a  literary  form:  "Henry 
Esmond,"  "  Robinson  Crusoe,"  "  Lorna 
Doone,"  "Jane  Eyre,"  "  Kidnapped,"  "  David 
Balfour,"  "Peter  Ibbetson,"  "Harry  Rich 
mond,"  "Joseph  Vance,"  —  good  books, 
indeed ! 


THE  NOVELIST'S  CHOICE  165 

With  such  a  list  before  us,  it  may  seem 
presumptuous  to  hint  that  the  autobiogra 
phical  form  has  its  limitations  and  its  draw 
backs.  Yet  I  believe  it  has.  For,  first,  there  is 
a  danger  in  it  arising  from  a  fact  inherent  in 
human  nature:  the  fact  that  heroes  and  min 
strels  are  not  usually  made  of  the  same  stuff. 
One  does  things,  the  other  tells  about  them. 
The  person  whom  adventures  befall  is  not 
necessarily  the  one  who  is  best  able  to  relate 
them.  It  is  not  always  so,  of  course.  There 
are  rare  beings  who  are  born  with  the  hero 
and  the  minstrel  soul  bound  together  within 
them  —  the  Odysseus  and  the  JSneas  souls. 
For  them  it  is  very  well.  It  was  well  for 
Odysseus,  in  the  hall  of  the  Phseacians,  and 
for  ^Eneas,  in  the  court  of  Dido,  to  tell  their 
adventures.  They  were  doubly  gifted,  for 
action  and  for  expression.  But  what  if  Achilles 
had  tried  to  tell  his  story?  Or  A j ax  his?  Poor, 
inarticulate  Ajax!  There  was  plenty  to  tell, 
but  what  a  botch  he  would  have  made  of  it! 
He  is  better  off,  he  and  Achilles  too,  in  the 
hands  of  Homer. 

The  race  of  the  inarticulate  has  not  yet 
died  out.  It  never  will.  But  we  would  not 


166  THE  NOVELIST'S  CHOICE 

wish  to  miss  the  telling  of  their  stories  because 
it  must  be  done  by  other  lips  than  theirs.  The 
story  of  Quasimodo,  the  story  of  Tess,  the 
story  of  Dorothea  Brooke,  the  story  of  Clara 
Middleton,  the  story  of  Isabel  Archer,  these 
are  all,  for  various  reasons,  stories  which  could 
never  have  come  from  the  characters  them 
selves.  Some  of  them,  perhaps,  could  have 
told,  but  never  would  have  done  so.  Others 
would,  perhaps,  but  never  could.  Most  of 
them  probably  neither  would  nor  could.  And 
we  are  glad,  when  we  think  about  them,  that 
their  authors  did  not  force  them  to  the  con 
fessional  against  their  natures. 

Authors  are  not  always  so  considerate.  I 
have  read  autobiographical  novels  where  the 
pleasure  of  the  story  was  continually  clouded 
by  a  feeling  of  protest  that  it  should  have 
been  told  thus.  David  Balfour,  in  certain 
parts  of  it,  gives  me  this  feeling.  When  he  is 
telling  his  adventures  it  is  well  enough,  though 
even  there  I  should  sometimes  be  glad  if  the 
story  could  have  been  told  quite  directly  and 
simply  by  the  author.  I  should  like  to  know 
how  David  looked  now  and  then,  as  well  as 
what  he  did.  And,  of  course,  David  was  not 


THE  NOVELIST'S   CHOICE  167 

the  kind  of  fellow  who  would  ever  know  how 
he  looked;  still  less  could  he  ever  have  written 
it  down  as  part  of  an  account  of  his  life.  But 
when  it  comes  to  his  love  affairs,  and  I  find 
him  writing  these  down  in  some  detail,  I  must 
protest,  "Oh,  David!  You  know  you  never 
would  have  told  that!"  And  then  I  find  my 
self  suddenly  regarding  David  with  suspicion. 
I  long  to  step  into  the  story  and  pull  his  hair 
and  see  if  it  is  not,  after  all,  only  a  wig  —  to 
pull  his  nose,  and  see  if  the  mask  does  n't 
come  off,  disclosing,  not  David  at  all,  but 
David's  author,  Stevenson. 

Ah,  there  is  the  danger!  The  story  must 
be  told,  the  secrets  must  be  laid  bare  — 
secrets  guarded  not  by  big  keys  and  heavy 
boulders  of  rock,  but  by  the  walls  of  impene 
trable  reserve  in  our  own  human  nature.  If 
they  are  not  told,  we  are  baffled  and  disap 
pointed.  If  they  are  told,  we  are  critical.  It  is 
a  dilemma. 

Sometimes,  indeed,  the  problem  is  success 
fully  met.  In  "Lorna  Doone,"  for  example, 
John  Ridd,  —  plain  John  Ridd,  —  telling  his 
own  love  story,  manages  to  steer  along  the 
narrow  channel  between  too  much  reserve 


168  THE  NOVELIST'S   CHOICE 

and  too  little.  He  loves  Lorna,  he  is  not 
ashamed  to  confess  that  to  all  the  world,  but 
as  to  what  he  says  to  Lorna  about  it,  or  what 
she  says  to  him,  this  is  a  matter  which  in 
his  opinion  is  nobody's  business  but  his  and 
hers.  And  one  can  almost  see  the  shy,  yet 
humorous  half-smile  and  heightened  color 
with  which  he  backs  away  from  a  love  scene 
and  cannily  edges  round  it,  to  take  up  the 
narrative  again  further  on.  One  could  wish 
that  David  Balfour  had  learned  a  lesson  of 
John. 

Moreover,  as  I  have  already  suggested  in 
the  case  of  David,  the  autobiographical  form 
is  unsatisfactory  in  another  way.  If,  on  the 
one  hand,  it  gives  us  too  much  of  the  hero- 
autobiographer's  private  soul,  so  that  we  pray 
for  a  little  decent  reserve,  on  the  other  hand, 
it  often  gives  us  too  little  of  his  public  face, 
too  little  of  the  commonplace  externals  of  his 
personality.  And  here  again  the  trouble  arises 
from  certain  universal  facts  of  human  experi 
ence.  For  we  are  accustomed  to  get  at  people 
from  the  outside.  We  look  at  their  faces,  we 
watch  them  walk,  we  listen  to  their  voices, 
we  notice  what  clothes  they  wear  and  how 


THE  NOVELIST'S  CHOICE  169 

they  wear  them,  we  regard  them  in  their 
goings-out  and  their  comings-in,  and  after  a 
while  we  arrive,  or  think  we  arrive,  at  a  cer 
tain  intimacy  with  what  we  call  their  souls. 
We  say  we  know  them.  Perhaps  we  do,  and 
perhaps  we  don't,  but  at  any  rate,  such  knowl 
edge  as  we  have  is  reached  in  this  way.  It  is 
the  way  we  are  accustomed  to;  we  know  how 
to  value  and  allow  for  its  data,  how  to  dis 
count  its  deceptions  —  perhaps  we  even  like 
its  baffling  reserves. 

Now,  in  the  autobiographical  novel,  all  this 
is  reversed:  instead  of  approaching  the  hero 
from  the  outside,  we  approach  him  from  the 
inside.  Instead  of  looking  into  his  eyes,  we 
look  out  of  them.  In  a  sense,  doubtless,  we 
know  him  better  than  if  we  had  approached 
him  through  the  ordinary  channels,  but  in 
another  sense  we  do  not  know  him  so  well. 
It  is  too  much  like  the  way  we  know  —  or 
rather  the  way  we  fail  to  know  —  ourselves. 
And  so,  in  the  autobiographical  novel  one 
sometimes  grows  a  little  tired  of  looking  from 
within,  out.  One  longs  to  stand  off  and  get  a 
good  plain  view  of  the  hero's  nose,  and  his 
eyes.  One  wants  to  see  him  walk  down  the 


170  THE  NOVELIST'S  CHOICE 

street,  instead  of  walking  down  the  street  in 
side  him. 

Authors  realize  this,  at  least  by  flashes,  and 
they  try  to  gratify  us,  sometimes  in  very 
amusing  ways.,  Here  is  Marcelle  Tinayre,  for 
example,  in  "Helle,"  which  is  the  autobiog 
raphy  of  a  young  girl.  She  is  beautiful,  — 
she  manages  to  imply  that  without  involving 
herself  in  any  breach  of  decorum,  —  but  she 
must  in  some  way  be  described  more  fully. 
So  the  author  makes  her  stand  before  a  mirror 
in  her  ball-gown  and  set  down  what  she  sees 
there.  The  ruse  is  obvious.  The  action,  which 
would  have  been  natural  —  indeed  inevitable 
—  for  a  person  like  Marie  Bashkirtseff,  is  for 
Helle  entirely  out  of  character.  But  what 
would  you  have?  The  reader  must  be  told 
what  she  looked  like. 

On  the  other  hand,  such  an  expedient  is 
sometimes  entirely  successful.  There  is  a 
scene  in  "Jane  Eyre,"  where  Jane,  in  a  frenzy 
of  mingled  jealousy  and  self-martyrdom,  sets 
herself  down  before  her  mirror  and  paints 
with  remorseless  fidelity  her  own  plain  face, 
then  paints  from  memory  a  portrait  of  the 
beautiful  lady  whom  she  imagines  to  be  her 


THE   NOVELIST'S   CHOICE  171 

rival  in  the  affections  of  Rochester.  The 
action  is  perfectly  natural.  I  believe  Jane 
was  always  looking  in  the  glass,  not  because 
she  admired  herself,  but  because  she  did  not. 
And  this  pricking  consciousness  of  her  own 
appearance  pervades  the  whole  narrative,  so 
that  one  has  in  its  perusal  very  little  of  this 
sense  that  I  have  been  speaking  of,  of  viewing 
the  hero  entirely  from  within. 

This  could  be  achieved  in  the  fictitious 
autobiography  of  Jane,  just  as  it  was  in  the 
real  autobiography  of  Marie  Bashkirtseff ;  but 
there  are  types  of  women  with  whom  it  could 
not  be  done  —  women  like  Dorothea  Brooke 
or  Clara  Middleton.  Clara,  struggling  hope 
less  in  the  net  of  circumstance,  yet  flashing 
keen  lights  on  the  people  about  her,  could 
never  turn  such  light  on  herself.  She  was 
unaware  of  her  own  physical  loveliness,  — 
her  walk,  her  hair  as  it  curled  about  her  ears 
and  neck.  Call  such  things  trifling  and  exter 
nal  if  you  will,  yet  it  is  through  such  trifling 
externals  that  some  of  our  deepest  and  most 
instinctive  impressions  arise. 

But  if  self -portraiture  is  not  natural  to  all 
women,  still  less  is  it  so  to  most  men.  In 


172  THE  NOVELIST'S  CHOICE 

Locke's  "Simon  the  Jester,"  for  example,  we 
find  our  hero  writing  thus:  "I  looked  at  him 
and  smiled,  perhaps  a  little  wearily.  One  can 
always  command  one's  eyes,  but  one's  lips  get 
sometimes  out  of  control.  He  could  not  have 
noticed  my  lips,  however."  Instantly  we  de 
tect  the  note  of  falseness  here.  Such  a  man 
would  not  have  carefully  written  down  the 
fact  that  he  smiled  wearily,  and  that  his  friend 
did  not  notice  his  lips.  Oscar  Wilde  would 
have  been  aware  of  such  a  fact  about  himself, 
and  when  in  "Dorian  Grey"  he  makes  his 
hero  run  to  the  mirror  to  catch  his  own  ex 
pression  before  it  fades,  we  do  not  challenge 
it,  though  we  may  perhaps  question  whether 
Dorian  Grey  was  worth  writing  about  at  all. 
But  we  do  not  expect  such  things  from  Simon 
de  Gex  —  we  do  not  expect  such  things  from 
most  men.  Of  course  the  fact  was,  that  the 
author  of  Simon  wanted  us  to  know  that 
Simon's  smile  was  a  weary  one,  and  no  way 
of  making  this  clear  occurred  to  him,  except 
that  of  having  Simon  himself  admit  that  he 
smiled  wearily.  This  little  passage  is  not  a 
momentary  slip.  It  is  typical  of  the  whole 
book,  which  might  be  used  as  an  illustration 


THE  NOVELIST'S  CHOICE  173 

of  the  way  in  which  an  unfortunate  method  of 
telling  the  story  acts  as  a  handicap  from  be 
ginning  to  end.  With  a  rather  unusual  and 
very  interesting  situation  to  set  forth,  the 
author  has  thrown  away  his  chance  of  making 
it  seem  "  inevitable "  by  setting  up  at  the 
start  a  postulate  in  which  we  can  never  ac 
quiesce  —  the  postulate  of  Simon  de  Gex 
writing  himself  up. 

Clearly,  description  of  the  hero  by  himself 
is  dangerous  tactics.  Yet,  where  it  is  not 
attempted,  we  miss  it.  The  weakness  of  the 
latter  part  of  De  Morgan's  "Joseph  Vance" 
is,  I  believe,  due  not  entirely  to  the  fact  that 
his  father  died  out  of  the  story,  but  also, 
among  other  things,  to  the  fact  that  Joseph 
himself,  being  grown-up,  could  no  longer 
regard  himself  impersonally  enough  to  make 
his  personality  vivid  to  us.  And  readers  of 
the  book,  if  they  are  at  all  like  me,  carry 
away  from  it  a  vivid  picture  of  Joseph  Vance 
the  boy,  but  a  very  pale  picture  of  Joseph 
Vance  the  man. 

It  is,  perhaps,  the  endeavor  to  escape  from 
some  of  these  pitfalls  that  beset  the  auto 
biographical  form,  and  yet  to  profit  by  its 


174  THE   NOVELIST'S   CHOICE 

opportunities,  which  leads  writers  to  try 
another  expedient  —  that  is,  to  let  the  story 
be  told,  not  by  the  hero,  but  by  the  hero's 
friend.  "The  Beloved  Vagabond"  is  done  in 
this  way,  and  very  cleverly  done.  Clearly,  it 
could  never  have  been  told  by  the  Vagabond 
himself.  An  outside  view  of  him  was  indis 
pensable.  He  could  never,  without  stepping 
entirely  out  of  his  own  character,  have  set 
forth,  or  even  dimly  suggested,  the  portrait 
of  himself,  of  his  whole  whimsical,  lovable 
personality,  as  it  is  set  forth  by  his  young 
friend  and  protege,  the  street  waif,  little 
Asticot. 

The  objection  to  this  method  is,  that  the 
teller  of  the  story,  not  having  the  hero's  deci 
sive  influence  on  the  action,  is  apt  to  fade  into 
a  nonentity,  a  shadowy  person,  so  that  one 
scarcely  remembers  him.  In  "The  Beloved 
Vagabond"  this  is  not  true  of  the  first  part  of 
the  book.  There,  as  in  "Joseph  Vance,"  the 
narrator  is  looking  back  upon  his  own  child- 
self.  But  as  little  Asticot  grows  up,  and  be 
comes  the  narrator  of  his  patron's  story,  he 
himself  recedes,  we  have  no  clear  picture  of 
him. 


THE  NOVELIST'S  CHOICE  175 

Similarly  in  "The  Newcomcs,"  the  nar 
rator-friend  keeps  himself  so  entirely  in  the 
background  that  I  fancy  many  of  us  have  not 
realized  at  all  that  the  story  is  actually  told 
by  one  of  the  characters,  and  not  by  Thack 
eray  himself.  And  I  think  we  may  all  admit 
that  in  this  volume  Pendennis,  considered 
simply  as  the  narrator  of  the  Newcornes'  his 
tory,  is  very  close  to  a  nonentity. 

But  if  a  nonentity,  why  there  at  all?  If 
the  actor-narrator  pales  to  a  mere  literary 
convention,  what  is  there  to  gain  by  keeping 
him? 

Very  little  to  gain,  and  something  to  lose. 
For,  whether  hero  or  hero's  friend,  the  teller 
of  the  story,  once  committed  to  his  task  of 
accounting  for  himself,  and  for  his  possession 
of  all  the  facts  of  the  narrative,  cannot  lay 
it  down.  He  must  keep  on  accounting  for 
himself.  Every  time  he  narrates  an  event  of 
which  he  was  not  himself  an  eye-witness,  he 
must  explain  how  he  found  out  about  it.  If 
he  fails  to  do  this  satisfactorily,  the  entire 
fabric  of  probability  so  carefully  built  up  by 
the  author  topples  and  falls.  How  does  little 
Asticot  know  that  the  English  lady  is  his 


176  THE  NOVELIST'S  CHOICE 

master's  old  love?  How  does  he  know  there 
was  an  old  love  at  all?  He  must  account  for  it 
—  and  does.  He  saw  some  old  letters,  some 
verses,  he  put  two  and  two  together.  We 
are  satisfied  this  time,  but  the  question  may 
arise  again,  and  we  shall  need  to  be  satisfied 
again. 

Pendennis,  conscious  of  this  necessity  of 
accounting  for  his  information,  was  not  so 
inclined  to  meet  it  in  this  way.  He  was  aware 
that  he  could  never  follow  the  rules  of  the 
game  if  he  interpreted  them  too  strictly,  and 
so  made  a  sort  of  general  confession,  a  blanket 
apology,  which  is  worth  quoting  at  length 
because  it  so  clearly  sets  forth  the  difficulties 
which  beset  the  actor-narrator:  — 

"In  the  present  volumes,  where  dialogues 
are  written  down  which  the  reporter  could  by 
no  possibility  have  heard,  and  where  motives 
are  detected  which  the  persons  actuated  by 
them  certainly  never  confided  to  the  writer, 
the  public  must,  once  for  all,  be  warned  that 
the  author's  individual  fancy  very  likely  sup 
plies  much  of  the  narrative;  and  that  he 
forms  it  as  best  he  may,  out  of  stray  papers, 
conversations  reported  to  him,  and  his  knowl- 


THE  NOVELIST'S  CHOICE  177 

edge,  right  or  wrong,  of  the  characters  of  the 
persons  engaged.  And,  as  is  the  case  with  the 
most  orthodox  histories,  the  writer's  own 
guesses  or  conjectures  are  printed  in  exactly 
the  same  type  as  the  most  ascertained  patent 
facts.  I  fancy,  for  my  part,  that  the  speeches 
attributed  to  Clive,  the  Colonel,  and  the  rest 
are  as  authentic  as  the  orations  in  Sallust  or 
Livy,  and  only  implore  the  truth-loving  pub 
lic  to  believe  that  incidents  here  told,  and 
which  passed  very  probably  without  wit 
nesses,  were  either  confided  to  me  subse 
quently  as  compiler  of  this  biography,  or  are 
of  such  a  nature  that  they  must  have  hap 
pened  from  what  we  know  happened  after. 
For  example,  when  you  read  such  words  as 
4  que  Romanus '  on  a  battered  Roman  stone, 
your  profound  antiquarian  knowledge  enables 
you  to  assert  that  'Senatus  Populus'  was 
also  inscribed  there  at  some  time  or  other. 
.  .  .  You  tell  your  tales  as  you  can,  and  state 
the  facts  as  you  think  they  must  have  been. 
In  this  manner  Mr.  James,  Titus  Livius, 
Sheriff  Alison,  Robinson  Crusoe,  and  all 
historians  proceeded.  Blunders  there  must 
be  in  the  best  of  these  narratives,  and  more 


178  THE  NOVELIST'S  CHOICE 

asserted    than  they  can  possibly  know   or 
vouch  for." 

There  are  very  few  heroes,  or  hero's  friends, 
who  have  taken  such  liberties,  but  then  few 
have  told  so  good  a  story  as  "The  Newcomes." 
I  fancy  we  are  ready  to  grant  Mr.  Pendennis 
all  the  privileges  he  demands,  yet  I  cannot 
help  feeling  that  Thackeray  set  him  rather 
too  hard  a  task  —  a  task  which,  indeed,  he 
might  better  have  assumed  himself.  In  fact, 
I  have  this  feeling  about  many  of  the  novels 
cast  in  the  autobiographical  form.  They  may 
be  good  stories  as  they  are,  but  they  might,  I 
suspect,  have  been  just  a  little  better  if  the 
author  had  not  limited  his  own  powers  by 
bundling  himself  up  in  the  clothes  and  the 
mask  and  the  wig  of  one  of  the  characters. 
I  do  not  feel  this  about  all  such  novels.  Some 
of  them  seem  to  me  just  right  as  they  are, 
and  after  any  number  of  experiments  with 
them  —  fancying  them  re- written  in  this  way 
and  that  —  I  come  back  to  the  author's 
choice  as  the  best.  This  is  the  case  with 
"Lorna  Doone"  and  "Henry  Esmond"  and 
"Jane  Eyre  "  and  "Kidnapped"  and  "Treas 
ure  Island"  and  "Joseph  Vance." 


THE   NOVELIST'S  CHOICE  179 

It  seems  like  a  curious  company  of  books 
to  be  named  in  one  sentence.  Yet,  after  all, 
they  are  of  only  two  kinds:  stories  of  inner 
experience,  told  by  an  introspective  hero;  and 
stories  of  adventure,  told  by  a  hero  of  naive 
temperament  with  a  clear  grip  on  the  prac 
tical  in  life.  That  is,  in  each  case,  the  hero  is 
fitted  to  his  task.  John  Ridd  could  not  have 
written  Esmond's  story  nor  Esmond  John 
Ridd's,  but  John  Ridd  was  perfectly  capable 
of  writing  his  own,  and  Esmond  his.  Jane 
Eyre's  story,  told  by  any  one  but  herself, 
would  lose  something  of  its  value.  Told  by 
herself,  it  is  wonderfully  impressive  as  a  hu 
man  document.  The  life  she  portrays  could 
not,  perhaps,  have  been  what  she  saw  it,  but 
this  is  how  she  actually  did  see  it.  There  never 
was  a  man  like  Mr.  Rochester,  perhaps.  But 
nobody  cares  about  that.  What  we  are  con 
cerned  with  is  her  idea  of  Mr.  Rochester.  And 
we  are  convinced  that  there  was  a  woman 
who  felt  about  a  man  what  she  felt  about 
Mr.  Rochester.  The  whole  book  is,  in  fact, 
lyric. 

It  is  the  record  of  a  temperament  buffeted 
about  by  the  impact  of  people  and  circum- 


180  THE  NOVELIST'S   CHOICE 

stance,  which  are  viewed  only  as  they  affect 
this  temperament.  Whether  you  like  that 
kind  of  temperament  or  not  is  another  mat 
ter.  Given  the  subject,  the  book  rings  true, 
and  the  lyric  form  was  undoubtedly  the  best 
for  it. 

In  his  search  for  the  "inevitable,"  then, 
the  writer  has,  after  all,  nothing  to  gain  by 
resorting  to  the  expedient  of  the  actor-narra 
tor,  unless  this  actor-narrator  is  himself  inev 
itable,  —  unless  his  part  as  teller  of  the  story 
fits  him  so  perfectly  as  to  require  no  apology. 
This  will  hardly  be  the  case  except  with  a 
very  limited  class  of  adventure  stories,  and 
with  a  larger  class  of  stories  which  are  the 
records  of  an  introspective  nature.  With 
these  exceptions,  he  usually  does  better  if  he 
works  with  free  hands,  —  if,  taking  as  his  own 
the  apology  of  Pendennis,  he  quietly  supplies 
the  missing  words  of  the  inscription,  tells  his 
tales  as  he  can,  and  states  the  facts  as  he 
thinks  they  must  have  been.  And  if  his  under 
standing  of  life  be  deep  enough,  he  will  create 
in  us  the  illusion  of  reality  just  as  surely  as  if 
he  had  sought  to  establish  it  by  letters  and 
diaries. 


THE   NOVELIST'S  CHOICE  181 

Even  when  freed  from  a  certain  kind  of 
accountability,  he  need  not  necessarily  take 
any  more  liberties  with  his  characters  than 
the  hero  would  have  done.  "Pride  and  Preju 
dice,"  for  example,  is  told  almost  as  Elizabeth 
would  have  told  it  herself  if  she  had  written 
it.  Hardly  any  information  is  given  but  what 
she  knew,  and  Darcy's  character  is  not  fully 
cleared  up  until  it  is  cleared  in  her  eyes.  In 
the  "Three  Musketeers"  the  story  is  told  as 
D'Artagnan  might  have  told  it.  What  is  a 
mystery  to  him  remains  a  mystery  to  the 
reader.  His  estimate  of  the  other  characters 
dominates  the  story.  Yet,  not  being  told  by 
him,  but  by  an  irresponsible  author,  the  tale 
is  carried  on  with  a  lightness  and  freedom 
that  D'Artagnan  himself,  writing  in  charac 
ter,  could  hardly  have  achieved.  Ho  wells,  in 
"The  Rise  of  Silas  Lapham,"  tells  the  story 
from  the  standpoint  of  Mr.  Lapham,  or, 
now  and  then,  from  that  of  Mrs.  Lapham. 
We  are  allowed  to  follow,  to  some  extent, 
the  workings  of  their  minds,  but  their  two 
daughters  are  treated  externally.  As  we 
follow  their  fortunes  and  try  to  predict  the 
outcome,  we  have  little  more  to  go  upon 


182  THE  NOVELIST'S   CHOICE 

than  their  parents  had.  This  is  Howells's 
usual  method,  and  it  is  the  method  of  much 
modern  writing. 

Mr.  James,  in  "The  Other  House,"  carries 
the  external  point  of  view  to  such  an  extreme 
that  at  the  end  of  the  book,  when  the  evidence 
is  all  in,  there  is  still  room  for  question,  among 
intelligent  people,  as  to  what  really  happened ; 
and  even  more  room  for  disagreement  as  to 
what  the  motives  of  the  characters  were. 
Mr.  James  also  furnishes  us  the  best  example 
I  can  think  of,  of  the  other  extreme,  where  the 
treatment  is  exclusively  internal.  In  a  curi 
ous  piece  of  writing,  "In  the  Cage,"  which  I 
cannot  help  thinking  was  a  bit  of  pure  experi 
menting,  he  attempts  to  set  forth  the  spiritual 
states  of  a  girl  telegrapher  —  states  of  which 
she  herself  was  only  dimly  aware,  impulses 
which  never  reached  consciousness,  feelings 
which  she  never  more  than  half  confessed, 
even  to  herself. 

Between  these  two  extremes  most  of  the 
best  story-telling  is  done.  Authors  do  not 
often  openly  assume  omniscience:  they  treat 
their  material  from  the  standpoint  of  an 
impartial  witness.  Yet,  when  omniscience  is 


THE  NOVELIST'S   CHOICE  183 

needed  to  explain  character  and  interpret 
motive,  — 

"  All  that  the  world's  coarse  thumb 
And  finger  failed  to  plumb,  —  " 

it  is  assumed  without  apology,  and  the  reader 
grants  it  without  demur.  If  we  think  of  parts 
of  "Vanity  Fair"  and  "Middlemarch"  and 
"The  Mill  on  the  Floss,"  of  "Richard 
Feverel"  and  "The  Portrait  of  a  Lady,"  of 
"Somehow  Good"  and  "Tess,"  and  many 
others,  we  realize  what  we  should  be  giving 
up  if  writers  had  tied  themselves  down  to  the 
autobiographical  form.  The  more  one  thinks 
of  it,  the  more  one  feels  sure  that,  tempting 
as  it  is,  its  restrictions  outweigh  its  oppor 
tunities. 

And  yet  —  one  comes  back  to  "Henry  Es 
mond,"  and  one  remembers  "Joseph  Vance," 
and  one  cannot  be  satisfied  to  end  the  matter 
in  a  hard  judgment  like  that.  For  there  is  a 
certain  quality  in  these  stories  which  endears 
them  to  us  in  a  peculiar  way,  and  which,  I 
believe,  is  specially  fostered  by  the  autobio 
graphical  form  in  which  they  are  cast.  There 
is  a  certain  type  of  story  with  this  quality 


184  THE   NOVELIST'S  CHOICE 

potentially  inherent  in  it,  which  no  other 
manner  of  telling  could  so  well  bring  out.  It 
is  a  story  like  "Henry  Esmond/'  the  story  of 
a  long  life,  told  as  by  one  who  has  lived  it, 
while  he  rests,  near  its  end,  and  looks  back. 

The  love  of  reminiscence  is  deep-rooted  in 
us.  We  do  not  need  to  have  length  of  years  in 
order  to  possess  it.  All  we  need  to  have  is  a 
consciousness  of  the  past  as  past.  Some  years 
ago,  a  little  friend  of  mine,  then  four  years 
old,  attained  a  new  phrase:  "Don't  you  re 
member?"  I  say  "attained,"  because  it  was 
evident  that  she  had  not  only  enlarged  her 
field  of  expression  by  a  new  word,  but  that 
she  had  enlarged  her  field  of  experience  by 
a  new  sensation,  —  the  sensation  of  reminis 
cence.  For  the  phrase,  "Don't  you  remem 
ber?"  always  ushered  in  a  story  out  of  her 
small  past,  some  event  of  the  preceding  win 
ter  or  summer,  some  glimpse  of  history  in 
which  she  had  been  actor  or  witness.  It  was 
always  uttered  with  shining  eyes  and  a  flush 
of  delight,  which  deepened  if  I  was  able  to 
catch  her  reminiscence  and  recognize  and  en 
joy  it  with  her.  Yet  the  things  remembered 
were  very  simple,  —  a  drive,  a  walk,  a  kitten, 


THE   NOVELIST'S   CHOICE  185 

a  child  watering  his  garden  or  falling  down. 
The  pleasure  came,  clearly,  not  from  the  orig 
inal  quality  of  the  experience,  but  from  the 
very  act  of  remembering.  She  was  tasting  the 
pure  pleasure  of  reminiscence.  Watching  her, 
I  fell  to  wondering  what  was  the  precious 
quality  of  this  pleasure  whose  flavor  she  was 
beginning  to  taste. 

The  charm  of  memory  lies,  I  think,  in  the 
quality  which  it  gives  things,  at  once  of  inti 
macy  and  remoteness.  The  fascination  to  us 
of  recalling  our  past  selves,  our  former  sur 
roundings,  lies  in  our  sense  that  they  are  ab 
solutely  known  to  us,  yet  absolutely  out  of  our 
reach.  We  can  recall  places,  houses,  rooms, 
until  every  detail  lives  again.  We  can  turn 
from  one  thing  to  another  and,  as  we  look  at 
each,  lo,  it  is  there!  It  has  a  reality  more 
poignant  than  the  hand  that  we  touch  or  the 
flower  that  we  smell.  Sometimes,  it  is  true, 
present  experiences,  even  as  they  occur,  have 
something  of  this  quality.  They  do  not  need 
to  recede  into  the  past  to  gain  this  glamour. 
Certain  places  have  it:  cathedrals  sometimes, 
and  still  lakes.  Certain  things  foster  it:  fire 
light,  and  silence,  and  the  steady  fall  of  rain. 


186  THE  NOVELIST'S  CHOICE 

Certain  moments  give  birth  to  it:  the  lumin 
ous  pause  between  sundown  and  dusk,  after 
noon  with  its  slant  of  light  through  deep  grass 
or  across  a  quiet  river.  This,  I  fancy,  was  what 
Tennyson  was  thinking  of  when  he  called  the 
lotus  land  the  land  "wherein  it  seemed  al 
ways  afternoon."  In  that  land  these  magic 
moments  were  prolonged,  and  thus  it  became 
the  land  of  reminiscence. 

My  little  friend  was  a  thought  too  young, 
perhaps,  to  have  entered  into  this  land.  It  is 
a  place  where  we  do  not  expect  to  meet  many 
children.  Girls  in  their  twenties  sometimes 
slip  in,  when  they  have  time,  and  boys  in  their 
teens,  and  then  again,  —  well,  perhaps,  boys 
in  their  fifties.  Indeed  the  forties  and  fifties 
are  the  usual  time  for  a  first  real  sojourn  in 
these  pleasant  meadows.  One  looks  over  the 
hedge,  or  slips  through  a  gap,  half  by  acci 
dent,  and  finding  it  fair  within,  one  comes 
back.  And  again  one  comes  back,  and  each 
time  one  stays  longer  and  wanders  farther. 
And  as  one  grows  to  know  it  better,  one  dis 
covers  that  there  is  more  than  a  meadow  be 
yond  the  hedge.  There  are  many  meadows, 
and  great  woods  and  rivers  and  cities.  And 


THE  NOVELIST'S  CHOICE  187 

the  delight  of  it  is,  that  everything  there  is 
like  something  one  has  seen  before,  only  love 
lier.  For,  just  as  still  water  interprets  and 
recreates  the  life  it  reflects,  so  in  the  land  of 
memory  life  is  rendered  again  with  a  tender 
ness  that  is  a  most  precious  kind  of  truth. 

It  is  not  to  every  one,  nor  to  any  one  at  all 
times,  that  the  mood  of  reminiscence  comes 
in  its  perfection.  Often  its  rarer  pleasures  are 
obscured  by  a  pain  that  is  no  necessary  part 
of  its  quality,  of tener  they  are  never  given  the 
chance  to  reveal  themselves.  They  require  for 
their  enjoyment  a  contemplative  spirit,  a  soul 
at  leisure,  that  the  waters  of  memory  may  be 
still  and  clear,  mirroring  the  images  of  things 
now  plainly,  line  for  line,  now  blurred  and 
softened  by  light  winds  of  oblivion  that  make 
the  vision  all  the  more  lovely. 

But  this  is  not  a  contemplative  age,  nor  is 
leisure  of  spirit  its  chief  characteristic.  There 
is  little  encouragement  given  to  the  reminis 
cent  mood,  either  in  literature  or  in  life.  Lit 
erary  endeavor  is  in  the  direction  of  concise 
ness  and  swiftness.  Its  motto  is  Stevenson's : 
"War  to  the  adjective!  Death  to  the  optic 
nerve ! " 


188  THE  NOVELIST'S  CHOICE 

This  is  very  good.  But  there  is  another 
kind  of  thing  that  is  good,  too:  the  kind  of 
thing  that  comes  with  the  brooding  vision, 
with  the  remoteness  that  permits  a  broader 
focus  and  a  greater  deliberateness  of  treat 
ment,  that  finds  expression  in  abundance  of 
delicately-wrought  detail.  This  it  is  which,  for 
lack  of  a  better  name,  I  am  calling  the  rem 
iniscent  manner.  One  meets  it  in  some  poetry, 
and  now  and  then  in  such  prose  as  Richard 
Jefferies's.  Its  most  complete  and  exquisite 
embodiment  is  surely  in  that  rare  and  perfect 
prose  lyric,  Walter  Pater's  "Child  in  the 
House."  One  might  expect  to  find  it  most  of 
all  in  the  real  autobiography,  since  this  is  the 
avowed  form  of  reminiscence.  But  they  are 
disappointing,  these  genuine  autobiographers. 
For  one  thing,  they  are  hampered  by  their 
facts.  Stevenson  was  quite  right  when  he  said 
that  a  finished  biography  was  "  not  nearly  so 
finished  as  quite  a  rotten  novel";  and  not  only 
in  finish  but  in  other  ways  it  is  at  a  disadvan 
tage  compared  with  fiction.  Sometimes  its 
writers  may  have  mistaken  notions  of  their 
obligation  to  suppress  their  own  personali 
ties;  they  must  always  have  instincts  of  re- 


THE  NOVELIST'S  CHOICE  189 

serve  which  we  cannot  fail  to  understand.  At 
all  events,  they  do  not  wander  in  the  fields  of 
reminiscence  with  the  free  step  and  the  joyous 
abandon  that  we  could  desire.  Yet,  even  so, 
the  rule  holds  that  we  have  noticed  with  re 
gard  to  novels :  the  chapters  dealing  with  their 
"early  years"  often  possess  a  charm  that  is 
lacking  in  the  rest  of  the  narrative.  For  there 
is  a  power  in  the  long  backward  look  that 
inevitably  transfigures. 

And  so  it  is  often  to  the  make-believe  auto 
biographies  that  we  turn  for  something  that 
is  in  its  essence  not  make-believe  at  all,  but 
a  reality  of  experience.  The  satisfaction  that 
they  give  is  not  of  a  kind  to  be  justified  or 
made  clear  by  reading  sample  passages.  It  is 
born  of  the  writer's  attitude,  which  through 
intimacy  with  him  we  come  to  share.  Merely 
to  think  of  "Henry  Esmond"  is  often  enough 
to  throw  one  into  a  mood  of  contemplative 
reminiscence.  A  lover  of  "Joseph  Vance"  has 
but  to  open  the  book  anywhere  for  a  moment 
and  the  color  of  his  thought  is  changed  —  he 
is  captured  by  this  charm  of  the  long  back 
ward  look  and  the  brooding  vision.  And  if 
through  the  magic  of  the  mood  we  are  floated 


190  THE  NOVELIST'S  CHOICE 

a  little  aside  from  the  remorseless  current  of 
immediate  living,  yet  the  realities  which  we 
thus  come  to  feel  are  indeed  realities,  whose 
recognition  we  deeply  crave,  and  to  whose 
expression  in  literature  we  give  eager  and 
loving  welcome. , 


The  Literary  Uses  of  Experience 

"DiD  you  enjoy  it  very  much?"  asked  a  lady 
of  a  little  girl  whom  she  met  coming  away 
from  an  entertainment.  "Yes,"  answered  the 
child,  but  there  was  a  note  of  reservation  in 
her  voice.  Then  she  threw  back  her  head  half 
defiantly  and  added,  "But  don't  you  think 
it 's  hard  that  I  can  never  go  to  anything  with 
out  having  to  go  home  and  write  an  account  of 
it  afterwards?  "  Hard,  indeed!  And  yet  harder 
that  the  tyrant  who  imposed  the  requirement 
happened  to  be  the  child's  mother  —  one 
of  those  overtrained  and  overanxious  people 
who  continue  to  bring  the  higher  educa 
tion  of  women  into  disrepute.  Of  course,  our 
sympathies  are  all  with  the  little  girl.  We 
recognize  that  her  protest  was  a  sign,  not  of 
naughtiness,  but  of  health.  There  was  some 
thing  wrong  about  this  continual  exploiting  of 
immediate  experience,  and  she  knew  it  and 
rebelled  against  it.  The  little  incident  has 
lain  in  my  mind  for  years,  serving  as  a  nucleus 
round  which  ruminating  thoughts  have  gath- 


192    LITERARY  USES  OF  EXPERIENCE 

ered  regarding  the  whole  subject  of  the  lit 
erary  uses  of  experience. 

The  writer  of  fiction,  if  he  is  at  once  sensi 
tive  and  conscientious,  must  often  find  him 
self  in  a  dilemma.  He  is  urged  to  "write  out 
of  his  own  experience,"  since  otherwise  his 
work  will  not  ring  true.  Look  at  Jane  Austen, 
he  is  told,  sitting  quiet  and  feminine  under  her 
lamp  and  writing  her  tales  of  the  little  every 
day  doings  of  little  everyday  folk!  Behold  her, 
even  refusing  to  undertake  the  great  histori 
cal  romance  urged  upon  her  by  Royalty  itself, 
because  it  "fell  outside  her  experience."  Here 
is  a  model  for  all  young  writers.  Very  well. 
The  obedient  artist  turns  him  to  the  Me  about 
him,  and,  sure  enough,  there  is  indeed  plenty 
of  material.  Here  is  an  aunt  who,  considered 
as  a  "character,"  is  ripe  to  be  picked  and  set 
in  a  book.  Here  is  a  sister-in-law,  whose  ex 
periences  with  her  servants,  literally  set  down, 
would  make  a  most  readable  and  instructive 
set  of  papers  for  some  woman's  journal.  Or, 
in  sterner  vein,  here  is  a  brother  or  a  friend 
whose  business  experience  or  whose  love- 
affair  offers  a  tempting  subject.  Finally,  the 
writer  realizes  that  in  his  own  life  he  has  only 


LITERARY  USES  OF  EXPERIENCE    193 

to  put  forth  his  hand  and  take  what  he  needs. 
Yes,  for  once  the  general  voice  is  speaking 
the  truth:  his  material  does,  indeed,  lie  close 
about  him. 

Suppose,  then,  he  takes  it,  uses  it.  We 
know  very  well  what  happens:  "Have  you 
read  that  last  thing  by  young  Bellerophon? 
The  one  about  the  Lady  and  the  Cook?  Of 
course  we  all  know  who  it  is  he  means  —  she 
simply  can't  keep  a  cook  —  it 's  the  scandal 
of  the  street,  the  number  she  has  in  a  month. 
But  I  don't  think  that  gives  him  any  right  — 
you  know  what  I  mean? "  If  it  is  his  own  ex 
perience  he  has  used,  the  results  are  different, 
but  no  better:  "You  saw  that  story  of  his? 
Yes  —  it  is  interesting.  I  suppose  you  knew 
it  was  his  own  experience  —  yes,  he  went  all 
through  that  a  few  years  ago  —  oh,  he's  all 
right  now,  but  his  family  felt  terribly  at  the 
time,  and  I  could  n't  help  wondering  how 
they'd  like  to  see  it  all  —  sort  of  spread  out 
in  print  this  way." 

Has  it  then  always  been  so?  Did  Eurip- 
ides's  contemporaries  look  askance  at  him 
because,  under  the  thin  disguise  of  Clytem- 
nestra,  he  had  written  up  a  sister-in-law?  Did 


194    LITERARY  USES  OF  EXPERIENCE 

those  who  listened  to  Sappho's  lyrics  shudder 
a  little  and  murmur,  "Beautiful,  of  course, 
but  —  how  could  she?"  Did  Horace's  ac 
quaintance  raise  their  eyebrows  over  some  of 
the  personalities  in  the  odes?  And  did  Ca 
tullus  's  pretty  little  lady  wish  he  had  not 
coined  her  and  her  pet  bird  into  verse?  We 
cannot  tell.  Time  has  wiped  out  the  original 
material,  whatever  it  was,  and  left  only  the 
artistic  rendering. 

About  our  contemporaries,  however,  one 
hears  persistent  rumors :  here  is  one  composing 
a  poem  on  his  son's  death  even  before  the 
burial,  and  handing  it  to  a  friend  for  possible 
publication.  Here  is  another  using  the  love- 
affairs  of  his  friends  —  quite  recognizably  — 
to  make  his  plots.  Here  is  another  setting  one 
of  our  centers  of  social  service  aflame  with 
indignation  because  she  had,  in  their  opinion, 
written  them  up.  Here  is  a  New  England 
town  boiling  over  with  resentment  because 
one  to  whom  they  had  shown  hospitality 
had  rewarded  them  by  "putting  them  into  a 
book."  I  saw  recently  a  newspaper  notice  of 
a  suit  brought  by  a  man  against  his  wife  be 
cause,  as  he  alleged,  her  latest  novel  made  use 


LITERARY  USES  OF  EXPERIENCE    195 

of  their  life  together  in  such  a  way  as  to  re 
flect  unpleasantly  on  his  character. 

Whether  in  these  and  other  cases  the  com 
plainants  are  justified,  it  is  neither  possible 
nor  necessary  to  consider.  The  moral  ques 
tion  involved  in  the  use  of  real  life  is  so  com 
plex  that  each  instance  would  have  to  be 
handled  separately.  It  was  once,  they  say, 
decided  that  a  man  might  sniff  the  odors  of 
another  man's  dinner  without  having  to  pay 
for  it,  but  whether  he  may  bottle  the  aroma  of 
another  man's  life  while  it  is  yet  hot,  for  the 
purpose  of  serving  it  again,  perhaps  cold  or 
lukewarm,  to  the  general  public,  is  quite  an 
other  matter.  It  is  at  least  clear  that  the  use 
of  experience  may  be  fraught  with  perplexity 
for  the  writer.  There  is  a  curiously  frank  ac 
knowledgment  of  this  in  a  short  story  by  Mrs. 
Wharton,  called  "Copy."  It  represents  two 
authors,  a  man  and  a  woman,  who  had  once 
been  in  love  with  each  other,  meeting  after 
the  lapse  of  years.  Each  has  the  other's  old 
love-letters,  and  each  suddenly  realizes  what 
wonderful  "copy"  these  would  make.  There 
is  much  skillful  and  intricate  fencing  between 
them,  but  at  last,  moved  by  a  scarcely  ac- 


196    LITERARY  USES  OF  EXPERIENCE 

knowledged  reverence  for  the  past,  by  some 
obscure  impulse  of  loyalty  to  it,  they  burn  all 
the  letters.  The  story  may  serve  as  a  reminder 
that,  whereas  we  are  apt  to  know  the  cases 
where  writers  have  yielded  to  temptation,  — 
if  temptation  it  be,  —  we  do  not  know  the 
cases  where  they  have  resisted. 

But  such  recognition  by  authors  themselves 
of  the  moral  problems  involved  seems  to  be 
rather  rare.  In  general,  though  readers  may 
question  or  condemn,  the  writer  himself  is 
likely  to  be  unconscious  of  offense.  I  met  an 
instance  of  this  once  when  I  was  thrown  for  a 
short  time  with  a  writer  of  stories.  She  had 
told  me  a  good  deal  about  her  life  at  a  certain 
period  several  years  before,  and  among  other 
matters  had  mentioned  a  teapot  of  delicate 
workmanship,  and  how  it  happened  to  get 
broken.  Later,  reading  her  newest  book,  I 
came  upon  the  incident  of  the  teapot.  As  I 
went  on,  I  noticed  other  correspondences  with 
what  I  knew  to  be  fact.  I  was  interested,  and 
one  day  I  brought  the  thing  up.  "It  gives  a 
good  deal  of  your  life  in  Rouen  that  winter, 
does  n't  it?"  I  said,  innocent  of  offense.  In 
stantly  her  color  flamed  and  her  eyes  showed 


LITERARY  USES  OF  EXPERIENCE    197 

deep  annoyance.  She  took  me  up  quickly: 
"It  has  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  my  life 
there.  How  could  you  have  supposed  that?" 
Naturally,  I  dropped  the  matter,  but,  that 
being  my  first  close  encounter  with  the  artis 
tic  temperament,  I  was  very  much  puzzled. 
There  was  no  doubting  her  sincerity,  but 
there  was  also  no  doubting  the  fact  that  her 
life  of  that  winter  had  got  into  her  book. 

Again,  a  young  girl,  just  out  of  college, 
wrote  her  first  novel.  Her  college  friends  read 
it  with  consternation.  "  But,"  they  exclaimed, 
"this  is  Anna  herself!  This  is  Anna's  step 
mother!  This  is  just  what  did  happen  that 
time  when  her  father  died!  This  is  not  a 
novel,  it  is  a  diary!  Anna  is  going  too  far." 
But  two  years  later  Anna  wrote  another  novel, 
containing  more  shocks  for  her  friends.  Here, 
they  claimed,  was  Anna's  engagement  and 
marriage.  Here  was  Anna's  husband.  Here 
were  her  experiences  at  the  birth  of  her  child. 
They  approached  her  about  it.  What  satis 
faction  did  they  get?  Just  as  little  as  I  got  in 
the  teapot  incident.  Anna  absolutely  denied 
any  connection  between  her  novel  and  her 
own  life,  and  Anna  was  truth  itself.  At  the 


198    LITERARY  USES  OF  EXPERIENCE 

same  time,  Anna,  speaking  as  an  artist,  ex 
cathedra,  said  firmly,  that  if  anything  in  her 
life  should  be  needed  for  the  artistic  com 
pleteness  of  her  literary  work,  she  would  not 
hesitate  to  use  it,  art  being  in  a  realm  so  much 
higher  than  one's  personal  feelings. 

From  all  this,  it  is  obvious  enough  that 
something  happens  to  the  artist,  while  he  is 
artist,  which  imposes  on  him  standards  dif 
ferent  from  ours  —  different  even  from  his 
own  when  he  is  not  in  the  artistic  mood.  So 
that  although  as  ordinary  man  in  ordinary 
intercourse  he  may,  for  example,  be  a  most 
reserved  person,  who  would  find  it  easier  to 
cut  out  his  own  heart  and  slice  it  up  for  his 
friends  than  to  cull  out  bits  of  his  deepest  life 
and  serve  them  up  in  conversation,  yet  on  the 
printed  page  we  may  find  him  doing  something 
very  much  like  this  —  exploiting  in  luminous 
paragraphs  moods  and  feelings  which  to  most 
of  us  seem  too  deep-lying  to  be  touched  upon, 
save  by  allusive  implication,  even  with  our 
most  beloved  friends.  I  have  read  articles  in 
the  magazines  that  made  me  uncomfortable, 
not  because  they  were  shocking  on  the  few 
lines  along  which  one  is  conventionally  sup- 


LITERARY  USES  OF  EXPERIENCE    199 

posed  to  be  shocked,  but  because  they  seemed 
to  me  to  involve  such  crude  exposure  of  the 
soul  as  nothing  but  hysteria  could  excuse.  A 
friend  of  mine,  trying  to  read  a  certain  essay 
—  if  one  may  apply  the  term  to  a  ten-page 
prose  lyric  expressing  the  author's  personal 
mood  —  suddenly  threw  it  down,  exclaiming, 
"This  is  too  painful  —  it's  raw!  It's  bleed 
ing!"  At  first  glance,  one  is  inclined  to  put 
such  writers  in  the  class  with  a  certain  little 
girl  I  knew,  who  climbed  up  into  her  mother's 
lap  and  said,  with  more  than  a  suggestion  of 
gloating  anticipation,  "Now,  mother,  let's 
talk  about  my  faults!"  But  is  it  perhaps  we 
who  are  wrong?  Is  our  vaunted  New  Eng 
land  reserve,  after  all,  at  fault?  Are  these 
writers  showing  us  the  way,  and  is  there  in  the 
future  to  be  no  reserve  in  life  as  there  is, 
apparently,  for  them,  none  in  art?  Or  are  we 
trying  to  reconcile  two  different  worlds  when 
we  allow  ourselves  to  be  troubled  by  the  art 
ist's  intimacy  of  revelation?  Are  we  shrink 
ing  from  the  spiritual  nude  in  art  as  some  peo 
ple  still  shrink  from  the  physical  nude,  merely 
because  our  artistic  perceptions  have  been 
incompletely  developed? 


200    LITERARY  USES  OF  EXPERIENCE 

These  are  questions  which  I  am  better  pre 
pared  to  ask  than  to  answer,  yet  a  sidelight 
on  them  has  seemed  to  corrie  through  my 
meditations  on  memory.  For  years  it  has 
beset  me,  this  thought  of  the  magic  possessed 
by  memory.  Where  it  touches  it  transforms. 
Nearly  everybody's  memory  is  artistic,  or  at 
any  rate  more  nearly  artistic  than  his  im 
mediate  perceptions.  Children  are  following 
a  true  instinct  when  they  beg  for  a  story 
"about  something  you  remember,  that  hap 
pened  a  long  time  ago,"  for  the  things  that 
we  thus  remember  have  a  way  of  gathering 
into  themselves  any  flavor  of  poetic  feeling 
that  may  be  in  our  nature.  What  is  it,  then, 
that  memory  does? 

For  one  thing,  it  selects.  In  our  immedi 
ate  perceptions  we  often  cannot  see  the 
woods  for  the  trees.  Memory  knows  no  such 
trouble.  Its  trees  are  often  blurred,  but  its 
woods  stretch  far  and  blue,  dark-shadowed 
and  full  of  meanings.  For  another,  it  dis 
tances.  Through  it  we  escape  from  the  im 
portunity  of  practical  issues.  Memory  knows 
no  practical  issues;  things  are  clear  but  we 
cannot  alter  them,  they  are  real  but  we  can 


LITERARY  USES  OF  EXPERIENCE    201 

neither  seize  nor  avoid  them.  The  light  of 
memory  is  a  light  that  never  was  on  sea  or 
land  —  mellow  and  soft,  full  of  tender  inter 
pretations,  of  delicate  emphases,  of  exquisite 
withdrawals. 

If  memory,  then,  is  a  kind  of  art,  art  is  a 
kind  of  memory.  Like  memory  it  selects,  like 
memory  it  interprets.  It,  too,  has  its  emphases 
and  its  withdrawals,  and  like  memory  it  cre 
ates  its  own  remoteness.  For  to  see  beauty, 
or,  more  broadly,  to  see  the  world  with  our 
perceptions  alert  to  its  aesthetic  significance, 
we  must  withdraw  from  it,  we  must  hold  it 
away  from  us.  While  we  are  seeing  the  beauty 
of  the  lion  who  crouches  in  the  jungle  grass, 
we  do,  in  that  instant  of  perception,  ignore 
the  necessity  for  killing  him,  the  danger  of  his 
killing  us.  Wandering  in  a  white  sea-fog  over 
the  marshes,  we  may,  in  a  realization  of  its 
weird  loveliness,  entirely  lose  our  sense  of  the 
menace  it  holds  for  us.  These  things  take 
upon  themselves,  for  the  moment,  something 
of  the  quality  of  memories.  Was  it,  as  Gil 
bert  Murray  suggests,  an  acknowledgment  of 
this  kinship  between  memory  and  art,  that 
the  Greeks  wove  into  the  fiber  of  their  philo- 


202    LITERARY  USES   OF   EXPERIENCE 

sophic  myth,  when  they  made  Memory  the 
mother  of  the  Muses? 

But  the  relation  is  one  of  kinship  only,  not 
of  identity.  For  whereas  the  remoteness  of 
memory  is  unalterable  and  eternal,  the  re 
moteness  of  our  art-perceptions  is  apt  to  be 
momentary,  and  in  part  at  least  a  matter  of 
our  own  choice.  While  memory  gently  but 
insistently  urges  us  into  something  much  like 
the  aesthetic  attitude  toward  the  treasures  it 
offers  us,  real  life,  with  its  lions,  and  its  fog, 
makes  a  more  complex  appeal.  There  is  only 
one  way  to  take  memory,  but  there  are  two 
ways  of  taking  life,  the  aesthetic  and  the  prac 
tical.  Between  these  two  there  is  a  plenteous 
lack  of  understanding.  "What  right,"  says 
the  practical  man,  "have  you  to  stand  around 
just  looking  at  lions  and  fog,  when  there  is  so 
much  that  is  really  important  to  be  done 
about  them?"  He  views  everything  in  one  of 
two  aspects:  it  is  either  a  thing  that  he  can  do 
something  to,  or  it  is  a  thing  that  can  do 
something  to  him.  He  thinks  of  things,  not  as 
they  are,  but  with  reference  to  what  he  would 
like  to  do  with  them  or  to  them.  Perception 
for  its  own  sake,  expression  for  its  own  sake, 


LITERARY   USES  OF   EXPERIENCE     203 

makes  no  appeal  to  him.  Even  memory  he 
forces  into  practical  service,  and  allows  its 
other  powers  to  atrophy. 

At  the  other  extreme  is  the  aesthete,  who 
lives  to  taste  the  flavors  of  his  perceptions  and 
to  express  them.  "Lions  and  fog  are  so  won 
derful,"  he  cries,  "Look  at  them!  Only  look!" 
And  while  the  practical  man  calls  him  a 
dreamer  and  a  trifler  and  a  shirk,  he  calls  the 
practical  man  a  barbarian  and  a  prude,  who 
is  afraid  to  look  at  life  as  it  really  is.  He 
undergoes  experience  as  all  men  must,  but 
almost  in  the  moment  of  its  occurrence  it  be 
comes  something  apart  from  him,  delicately 
valued  in  the  withdrawal  of  the  aesthetic 
mood.  Thus  life  for  him  is  continually  under 
going  such  a  transmutation  as  for  most  of  us 
only  the  magic  of  memory  can  bring  about. 
While  he  is  yet  white  with  indignation,  he 
may  say  to  himself,  "This  is  anger."  While 
he  loves,  he  realizes,  "This  is  indeed  passion." 
Probably  the  two  moods,  of  emotion  and  ap 
preciation,  are  not  really  simultaneous,  they 
may  alternate  with  lightning-like  interplay. 
But  they  seem  to  the  observer,  and  even, 
perhaps,  to  the  possessor,  like  two  streams 


204     LITERARY   USES   OF   EXPERIENCE 

flowing  on  together,  like  two  runners  racing 
abreast,  one  oblivious  of  all  but  the  mad  mo 
tion,  the  other  with  eyes,  not  on  the  goal,  not 
blind  with  the  rush  of  it,  but  turned,  deeply 
observant,  on  the  face  of  his  companion. 

It  is,  then,  this  capacity  for  immediate 
aloofness  from  experience,  this  power  of  with 
drawal  into  a  realm  closely  resembling  that  of 
memory,  which  makes  possible  for  the  artist 
some  of  the  things  that  shock  us.  But  though 
it  may  to  some  extent  explain  his  state  of 
mind,  it  does  not  perhaps  make  us  approve  of 
it  any  more  heartily.  For  there  is  something 
repellent  to  us  in  the  ability  thus  to  distance 
experience,  either  one's  own  or  another's.  It 
seems  not  quite  warmly  human.  When 
memory,  through  its  distancing  power,  grad 
ually  and  gently  loosens  the  bonds  of  reserve, 
we  permit  it,  we  even  love  it,  because  it  is  a 
universal  experience.  But  when  the  aesthetic 
mood  loosens  these  bonds,  not  gradually  but 
at  once,  by  merely,  as  it  were,  taking  a  step 
to  one  side,  we  shrink  a  little.  An  old  man,  we 
feel,  may  say  things  of  his  youth  that  his 
youth  could  not  have  said  of  itself  even  if  it 
had  known  them. 


LITERARY  USES  OF  EXPERIENCE    205 

What  we  probably  do  not  realize  is  that 
people  differ  enormously  in  their  rate  of  re 
action  to  life.  An  experience  which  in  one 
person  may  after  its  occurrence  not  come  to 
full  fruition  in  consciousness  for  months  or 
years,  may  in  another  pass  through  the  same 
phases  in  a  few  hours  or  even  minutes.  Yet 
the  lower  rate  is  so  much  commoner  that 
there  is  a  presumption  against  the  immediate 
coining  of  experience  into  artistic  expression. 
If,  after  a  great  bereavement,  a  man  sits 
down  at  once  and  embodies  it  in  a  poem,  if, 
when  an  overwhelming  passion  has  barely 
burned  itself  out,  he  proceeds  to  set  it  forth 
in  a  novel,  we  find  ourselves  suspecting,  even 
before  we  examine  the  case,  that  either  the 
bereavement  and  the  passion  will  prove  to 
have  been  not  so  overwhelming  after  all,  or 
else  that  their  artistic  rendering  will  prove 
not  really  artistic. 

This  last  point  is  one  which  needs  some  at 
tention.  So  far  I  have  been  considering  the 
use  of  experience  chiefly  in  its  ethical  aspects. 
It  is  clear  that  the  use  of  other  people  as  ma 
terial  for  art  often  exposes  writers  to  sharp 
and  persistent  criticism.  I  have  suggested 


206       LITERARY   USES  OF   EXPERIENCE 

that  there  are  reasons  grounded  in  the  proc 
esses  of  the  artistic  temperament,  why  this 
criticism  is  often  not  in  the  least  understood 
by  the  writers  themselves.  But,  aside  from 
this  question  of  the  moral  right  of  an  artist  to 
make  use  of  another's  life,  there  is  a  second 
question,  namely,  what  is  the  effect  of  the 
immediate  use  of  experience  on  the  art-prod 
uct  itself?  Morals  aside,  does  it  tend  to  pro 
duce  good  art?  In  the  case  of  one's  own  life, 
for  instance,  where  it  may  be  argued  that  one 
has  the  moral  right  to  use  whatever  one  likes, 
it  might  be  of  interest  to  inquire  whether, 
purely  from  the  effect  on  the  art-product,  it 
is  not  often  a  mistake  to  hurry  forward  into 
expression.  The  continual  tasting  and  label 
ing  of  sensation  tends  to  make  sensation  itself 
a  little  thin,  or  at  least  not  quite  true.  And 
it  is  conceivable  that  lions  and  fog  can  never 
be  completely  grasped,  even  aesthetically, 
save  by  one  who  has  first,  in  complete  aban 
donment  to  practical  needs,  fought  the  lions 
and  groped  through  the  fog.  Experience, 
entered  upon  with  a  conscious  aesthetic  pur 
pose,  may  be  thus  deprived  of  its  last,  keenest 
quality,  and  even  when  not  thus  taken,  it 


LITERARY   USES  OF  EXPERIENCE    207 

may,  if  too  hastily  garnered  into  expression, 
never  reach,  even  as  pure  expression,  the 
mellowness  of  maturity  that  might  otherwise 
have  been  attained. 

The  pressure  upon  the  artist  urging  him  to 
serve  green  fruit  instead  of  waiting  for  it  to 
ripen,  has,  of  course,  never  been  so  great  as 
now.  But  there  is,  I  believe,  pressure  of  an 
other  sort,  far  stronger  and  far  more  respect 
able,  arising  naturally  and  inevitably  out  of 
our  present  habits  of  thought.  With  the 
enormous  growth  of  scientific  interest  —  in 
terest  in  facts,  and  faith  in  what  they  may 
lead  us  to  —  we  have  developed  a  reverence 
for  accuracy,  patience,  thoroughness,  and  dis 
crimination.  "Study  your  own  thumb-nail 
enough,"  Agassiz  used  to  say,  "and  you  will 
find  enough  to  occupy  you  for  a  lifetime."  And 
he  was  fond  of  testing  young  students  by  giv 
ing  them  a  cross-section  of  a  broom-handle 
and  seeing  what  they  made  of  it.  This  was 
excellent.  Applied  to  coral  islands  and  earth 
worms  and  infusoria  and  sea-urchins,  it  is 
producing  stupendous  results.  And  now  at 
tention  is  being  turned  inward  upon  the  hu 
man  spirit  itself  —  not,  indeed,  for  the  first 


208     LITERARY   USES  OF   EXPERIENCE 

time,  but  for  the  first  time  with  just  these 
methods.  Man  himself,  as  Walter  Bagehot 
pointed  out  a  generation  ago,  has  become  an 
antiquity  —  that  is,  a  subject  for  scientific 
investigation.  And  the  artist  as  well  as  the 
scientist  has  caught  the  habit  of  thumb-nail 
study  and  inspection  of  broom-handle  sec 
tions.  This  too  is  excellent.  It  is  compelling 
writers  to  an  honesty  of  aim,  a  meticulous  pre 
cision  in  technique,  of  a  kind  that  has  never 
been  equaled.  The  scientist  who  would  sit 
in  his  study  and  write  about  the  processes  of 
nature  "out  of  his  head"  is  now  in  disrepute. 
Similarly,  the  journalist  who  would  write 
about  the  poor  without  first  having  "done 
the  slums"  would  be  very  much  behind  the 
times.  We  may  swing  back  again  to  a  love 
for  the  fantastic  and  fanciful,  but  at  present 
we  are  lost  in  admiration  of  the  obviously 
truthful. 

These  things  go  by  waves.  For  there  is  al 
ways  a  tendency,  when  we  have  become  im 
pressed  with  the  excellence  of  some  quality,  to 
see  that  quality  everywhere,  to  the  exclusion 
of  all  others.  If  we  love  blue,  we  see  blue  in 
everything.  If  we  have  been  deeply  moved  by 


LITERARY  USES  OF  EXPERIENCE    209 

the  excellence  of  courage,  or  of  honesty,  or  of 
kindness,  we  translate  all  the  moral  virtues 
into  terms  of  sincerity  or  honesty  or  kindness. 
There  are  reasons,  in  the  underlying  unity  of 
the  world,  why  this  can  rather  easily  be  done, 
both  with  colors  and  with  moral  qualities, 
but  it  has  to  be  done  carefully. 

So  with  theories  of  art.  Sometimes  it  is 
attempted  to  state  all  the  aesthetic  virtues  in 
terms  of  morality.  Ruskin  did  this  very  ap- 
pealingly  but  not  quite  satisfyingly.  Often 
they  have  been  stated  in  terms  of  beauty,  and 
this  also  has  its  pitfalls.  Just  now,  in  the  flush 
of  our  enthusiasm  for  the  ideals  which  science 
seems  to  have  set  up,  we  are  stating  them  in 
terms  of  sincerity.  This  disposes  of  certain 
problems,  for  instance,  the  problem  of  ugli 
ness;  but  it  leads  to  other  difficulties.  For 
even  in  the  scientific  observation  of  fact  there 
is  such  a  thing  as  losing  the  significance  of 
detail  through  absorption  in  its  immediate 
aspects,  and  this  is  yet  more  easily  possible  in 
the  realm  of  art.  There  may  have  been  a  time 
when  artists  needed  to  be  called  sharply  to  ac 
count  for  the  sincerity  of  their  intention  and 
the  accuracy  of  their  work,  but  at  present  they 


210    LITERARY  USES  OF  EXPERIENCE 

are  much  more  apt  to  offer  us  these  in  place 
of  something  else  that  would  be  of  still  greater 
value.  We  are  all  of  us  in  danger  of  falling  into 
two  fallacies :  first,  of  assuming  that  accuracy 
of  detail  in  the  art-product  is  the  most  neces 
sary  condition  of  its  high  quality  as  art,  and 
second  —  granting  that  such  accuracy  is  very 
desirable  —  the  fallacy  of  assuming  that  it 
will  necessarily  be  attained  in  the  highest  de 
gree  through  sincere  study  and  immediately 
faithful  rendering  of  detail.  If  our  theory 
makes  these  two  assumptions,  it  becomes  very 
difficult  to  explain  why  a  monument  of  honest 
and  masterly  self-analysis  like  AmiePs  "Jour 
nal"  is  not,  as  a  work  of  art,  greater  than 
"Hamlet."  The  truth  of  art  has  never,  per 
haps,  been  successfully  defined;  but  we  must 
see,  when  we  really  face  the  question,  that  it 
is  something  different  from  sincerity  in  the 
artist  or  accuracy  in  his  product.  For  we  have 
to  cover  the  truth  of  Shakespeare  with  half 
his  detail  wrong,  the  truth  of  Conrad,  with 
all  his  detail  right,  the  truth  of  Euripides, 
with  whose  detail  we  have  now  simply  noth 
ing  to  do,  the  truth  of  Rodin,  who  never 
works  from  a  single  pose  but  expresses  an  un- 


LITERARY  USES  OF  EXPERIENCE    211 

derstanding  born  of  fused  impressions.  It 
must  be  clear  that  this  truth  can  never  be 
expressed,  either  objectively  in  terms  of  ac 
curacy,  or  subjectively  in  terms  of  sincerity, 
except  by  wrenching  these  terms  away  from 
all  their  usual  connotations.  It  must  rather 
be  conceived  as  a  kind  of  vision  that  requires, 
indeed,  an  atmosphere  of  sincerity  and  is  fed 
by  experience  —  any  experience,  it  hardly 
matters  what,  —  but  which  requires  also  a 
certain  remoteness  and  detachment  of  spirit. 
I  sometimes  wonder  whether  we  should  not 
be  gainers  if  our  writers,  like  the  Greeks,  did 
a  life-work  first  —  a  good  chunk  of  hard, 
practically  serviceable  living  —  as  farmers  or 
manufacturers  or  administrators  or  teachers, 
and  only  after  this  were  permitted  to  fall  upon 
their  task  as  artists.  De  Morgan  and  Conrad 
among  the  moderns  are  shining  examples  of 
the  possibilities  of  this  programme;  and  with 
them  we  might  class  the  literary  men  who 
have  most  of  their  lives  swung  a  definite  busi 
ness,  carrying  on  their  artistic  labors,  as  it 
were,  "with  their  left  hand"  —  Matthew 
Arnold  and  Lamb,  for  example.  It  is,  indeed, 
only  rather  recently  that  writing  has  become 


212    LITERARY  USES  OF  EXPERIENCE 

lucrative  enough  to  permit  of  its  being  chosen 
early  as  a  profession. 

Probably  we  should  lose  something.  Doubt 
less  we  should  gain  something.  Doubtless  we 
should  be  spared  much  of  the  hasty  monger- 
ing  of  experience  to  which  I  have  been  re 
ferring.  In  thinking  of  this,  one  is  tempted  to 
use  the  neat  phrase  of  that  prince  of  dreamers 
who  was  also  in  his  lighter  moments  the  prince 
of  teases:  "You  cannot,  sir,  take  from  me 
anything  that  I  will  more  willingly  part 
withal." 


THE  END 


<Cbe 

CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U   .   S   .  A 


DATE 


AN  INITIAL  FINE  OF  25  CENTS 

DAY  IMD  TO  S..OO  ON  THE  SEVENTH  DAY 
OVERDUE. 


LI)  21-100m-7,'39(402s) 


E.  (•!' f 

Days   out, 'and  other 


958 
1.1875 


372195 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


